Proverbs for modernity.
Mattewada, a physician as well as a victim of chronic fatigue syndrome, begins his work with an arresting statement: “At the very moment you are complaining about your life, there is somebody, somewhere in the world, begging for it.” In this original, compelling collection, Mattewada assembles hundreds of short original statements designed to make the reader stop, think and contemplate. By and large he succeeds. The author’s statements arise from deep introspection and serious questioning of the world and its values. Nothing in this collection is trite or mundane, which is remarkable given the nature of the work. In fact, the slim volume, which covers a great deal of ground, reads much like one of the many collections of quotations from Henry David Thoreau, providing thoughtful, proverbial and eminently repeatable snippets on the big issues and questions of life. Some of Mattewada’s statements, however, are definitively modern, such as his two-page poem “A Patient’s Appeal,” which will resonate with anyone who has navigated a hospital or doctor’s office. A recurring theme is the futility of materialism, as Mattewada makes it clear that our toil and any resulting riches or fame are temporary and meaningless in the grand scheme of the universe. Indeed, he echoes the Old Testament’s book of Ecclesiastes (whether he knows it or not) in extolling the meaninglessness of our material lives. By contrast, he also speaks a great deal about suffering and sees it as a means of focusing on what really matters in life. He discusses God in many instances, sometimes ambiguously and agnostically, sometimes with certainty (e.g., “Abandon yourself to God”). An index would benefit the work, but overall, Mattewada’s perspective on life is an optimistic one, and he sees hope even in the midst of a broken world. As he says, “A problem cannot exist without a solution.”
A strikingly insightful gem.
Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0692026458
Page Count: 146
Publisher: YamPress Books
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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