A thoughtful, courageous memoir of family, religion, and self-discovery.
A novelist’s account of how she broke away from Orthodox Judaism to make a new life in the secular world.
Mirvis (Visible City, 2014, etc.) grew up in an observant Jewish family that believed “without God there is no meaning. Without the Torah, there is no goodness.” Though outwardly obedient to the tenets of her faith, she privately questioned the truth of what she was taught. After graduating from high school, the author went to Israel. For one year, she immersed herself in the study of Jewish religious texts and prayed to be forgiven for her willful ways. “I used to be a little bad,” she writes, “but now I was becoming entirely good.” When Mirvis began attending Columbia University, she “made few friends who weren’t Orthodox.” By the end of her senior year, she had married a fellow Orthodox Jew who had none of the dramatic “hard edges” other crushes had possessed in abundance. Fearful of her own rogue impulses, Mirvis strove to be a model Orthodox Jewish wife. She kept Shabbat and a kosher home, and she covered her hair and body according to traditional rules that governed married women. But the inner voice that had caused her to question her faith as a young girl and the self that could not fully reconcile her feminism with Orthodox teachings would not be silenced. Her first “rebellions” consisted of wearing pants and uncovering her hair. They became more pronounced when she began telling stories about Orthodox characters that “wrestled, doubted, and strayed.” Realizing she needed freedom to express a truth that had been trapped within her, she began the difficult journey that led her out of her marriage and away from Orthodox Judaism. The author’s sensitive thematic treatment of belonging and individuality and her candor about the terror she experienced leaving the only community she had ever known makes for moving, inspiring reading.
A thoughtful, courageous memoir of family, religion, and self-discovery.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-52052-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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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