A deeply emotional, intellectual, and literary examination of the Holocaust, framed through one man's journey to a small Polish town in which 2,000 Jews were executed by the Germans in 1941. Novelist Karlin (Lost Armies, not reviewed, etc.) took ``a self-imposed journey into the blurred space between memory, story and reality'' in the summer of 1993. The occasion was Karlin's visit to Kolno, a Polish town where his mother had lived before emigrating to this country—and the later scene of what Karlin aptly describes as ``a small, almost casual `action,' a tiny thread in the tapestry of murder.'' Karlin uses this journey as a literary jumping-off point to chronicle his mother's life and times, his own experience as a Marine in Vietnam, and his postwar emotional upheavals. Jumping back and forth in time, Karlin also weaves into this narrative a meditation on the literature of the Vietnam War as it's been practiced by veterans of that conflict—both American and Vietnamese—and an examination of the American massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. The ``rumors'' of the title refers to Karlin's mother's family stories, which, he says, ``grew from the real world'' but also ``were like dreams or rumors, their codes locked in her own references and memories, more riddles than guides.'' Karlin retells those stories and then fashions them into dreamlike fictional tales that he inserts among the book's more orderly and essaylike narrative chapters. There are several references to ``stones,'' including those customarily placed atop gravestones by Jews and the ground-up gravestones used by the Germans to pave the roads at the Treblinka death camp. The literary ``rumors'' chapters are sometimes slightly disconcerting, but they are as powerfully evoked and as emotionally penetrating as are the reportorial sections. A deft melding of disparate narratives, forming a unique and valuable addition to the literature of the Holocaust.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-880684-42-X
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Curbstone Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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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