An uplifting and life-affirming memoir.
A traveler/retiree’s account of the lessons he learned about living well from touring the country with his dying nonagenarian mother.
Bauerschmidt and his wife, Liddle, loved their nomadic travel-trailer lifestyle for the “simplicity and clarity” it offered them. But they also worried about what would happen to his aging parents when they could no longer take care of themselves. After his father’s sudden death from organ failure, he learned that his mother, Norma, was dying of cancer. Certain only that Norma deserved to experience happiness, he accepted the challenge of caring for his mother on the open road. In chapters that alternate between Bauerschmidt’s and Liddle’s voices, the book follows the trio along a route that took them from Norma’s home in Michigan all across America. Almost immediately, living together in close quarters changed them and how they treated each other. The formality and distance that had characterized Bauerschmidt’s relationship with his mother dissipated. Made newly vulnerable, he became closer to her and was able to grieve the death of a younger sister he had lost years before. Meanwhile, Norma’s shyness and stoicism gave way to joy. She learned to revel in experiences that included everything from watching Yellowstone geysers in Wyoming and an Indian tribal dance in New Mexico to trying a cannabis-based pain-relieving cream in Colorado and hot-air ballooning in Florida. Liddle, a woman who had been used to serving large communities, found unexpected reward in the renewed sense of purpose Norma gave her. The openness that characterized their relationship allowed all three to be at peace with Norma’s ultimate decision to discontinue all medical assistance and “die a natural death [and not deal] with the side effects of medication, or being hooked up to artificial means.” Depicting the ageless human capacity to learn and grow, the author celebrates life and offers a heartfelt vision of what dying a good death really means.
An uplifting and life-affirming memoir.Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-266432-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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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