An eloquent and charming, if somewhat aimless, memoir and travelogue.
A posthumous collection of essays and musings by a well-traveled man.
Thomas “Tom” Peyton, born in Duluth, Minn., saw many of the world’s sights over the course of his 91 years, from the Eiffel Tower to Ivory Coast. Although his debut memoir focuses primarily on his international travel, his memories of his Midwestern upbringing also appear. For example, in his opening essay, “Domestic Animals in My Life,” he offers an overly extensive history of his family’s dogs. However, readers may have liked to have learned more about the people in his “eminently Victorian household,” over which his father “ruled.” Peyton also recalls his encounters with several iconic historical figures—some at a great distance, others close enough for a handshake. As a spectator at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, for example, 17-year-old Peyton found Adolf Hitler to be “a small man of undistinguished shape and clothed in…rather ill-fitting military garb.” He adds, rather chillingly: “This was the man destined to play such a huge part in…the future of every one of us.” Of his service in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, Peyton writes, “I never left an occupation more willingly.” He joined the Peace Corps in 1962, answering what he called his “ethical demands,” and met President John F. Kennedy in the process. Peyton’s time in the Peace Corps inspired some of his best writing, not only in his memoirs, but also in his letters to his mother, in which he detailed the joys and frustrations of teaching in Ivory Coast. His sense of humor and prose skills also emerge, as in his description of “colonial society”: “[H]eavy men purple with drink and very liverish; women waiting only to be repatriated, totally without curiosity toward the world in which they find themselves.” The writing veers toward dry reportage when he chronicles his travels later in life, joined by his friend Osama Ettouney. Peyton eventually covered a truly impressive amount of ground, including Egypt, Greece, the Czech Republic, Italy, Brussels, Portugal and Luxembourg. At times, the author’s visual imagery is sharp (as when he describes “[e]meralds the size of a giant’s fingernail” in Istanbul, but more often, he simply retells the history of the world he so eagerly explored.
An eloquent and charming, if somewhat aimless, memoir and travelogue.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490593616
Page Count: 308
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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