Ellis is adept at balancing his shaky personal tribulations with the emotional rewards of fatherhood, but his sluggish...
Father of two laments his failed marriage, then dives into Los Angeles’s dating pool.
American Book Award winner Ellis (Right Here, Right Now, 1999, etc.) begins his chatty, slow-paced memoir with the collapse of his nine-year marriage to Anna, a restless beauty who found life-altering enlightenment with New Age spirituality. Despite desperate sessions with a marriage counselor, Anna insisted that she and Ellis begin “sharing each other with the world” and eventually left him and their young children. Dejected, Ellis refocused his energies on Chet and Ava, not wanting to become, as he writes, yet another member of the neglectful group of single black fathers “more renowned for our absence than our presence.” Meanwhile, Anna changed her name to Carmen, got dreadlocks and introduced boyfriend Doug, a “white rasta shaman.” Ellis stayed busy writing fiction and screenplay adaptations, and soon his grief was replaced by a sense that he should move on as well and not be mired in the same dismal relationship trenches his parents were stuck in when he was growing up. Fast approaching 40, he carried on with divorce proceedings, vigorously house-hunted, embraced Mr. Mom-hood and entered Southern California’s dating scene by calling up women who had expressed an interest in him back when he was with Anna/Carmen. Sabina wanted more than Ellis could give; former nanny Angela and current nanny Lucia didn’t fare much better. He just didn’t click with Penny, a Londoner, and Internet hook-up Cynthia turned out to be “morbidly obese.” Will Parisian beauty Lauri or Italian looker Cris finally win his heart?
Ellis is adept at balancing his shaky personal tribulations with the emotional rewards of fatherhood, but his sluggish narrative may be too snarky to garner the single-parent sympathy he seeks.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59486-529-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Rodale
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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