Limp, literary porn for the soft-core set.
Three steamy years in the life of an insatiable, pleasure-seeking Parisian Lolita.
Racking up at least four random sexual encounters on an average day, Tasso aims to achieve her “personal marathon” of 10,000 sexual conquests, scrupulously scribbled in diary entries that make up this “international bestseller”—all with her dear grandmother’s blessing. Ravaging men like a lioness and then hastily retreating, the author sleeps her way through tour guides, obese “pachyderm”-like men, cops and scores of others. Her best friend, Sonia, offers comic relief during Tasso’s downtime, but soon, the promiscuous author is sexing her way across Europe again, thanks to the travel perks afforded by her cushy advertising job. The dark, dangerous hills of Lima, Peru, France, Barcelona—all provide a fertile environment for the ravenous Tasso to carry on the countless, spontaneous erotic encounters that she never seems to regret. Her only “golden rule” is to remain detached from these anonymous trysts, to be enjoyed on a one-time-only basis: “A repeat session with a stranger doesn’t interest me. I prefer to pick up someone else in the street.” Ultimately, real life intervenes, stagnating much of the second half of Tasso’s formerly vigorous adventures. She gets laid off (from work, that is), her beloved grandmother dies and she has an abortion, all of which serve as sobering reality checks. Working as a freelance translator barely keeps the author afloat, though an attempt to score more permanent employment leads only to an extended melodramatic affair with Jaime, the cash-strapped compulsive liar who’d first interviewed her. Turning 30, desperate times force her to become a prostitute at a brothel, a job that provides easy money, though the demeaning, aggressive customers and a malicious “boss” eventually take their toll. And then love rescues the happy hooker. Amazingly, the worst physical malady Tasso contracts is gastroenteritis. Though written in deceptively dulcet tones, Tasso is a drama queen, and her initially titillating thrills are deflated by her many halfhearted theatrics.
Limp, literary porn for the soft-core set.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-56975-560-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Amorata/Ulysses
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2006
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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