An intriguing but uneven account of a remarkable woman triumphing over adversity.
A debut author chronicles a life spent overcoming family and physical problems, from her childhood in Michigan through her retirement from a notable career at General Motors.
Thomson seemed to know from an early age that she was special. She understood things quicker than her fellow students and she was willing to stand up for herself. These were helpful traits for a girl growing up with a set of fused fingers, a deformed arm, a prosthetic leg, an abusive mother, and an alcoholic father. Her intelligence and determination helped her overcome her social awkwardness and a number of adversities. She left behind her full scholarship to Michigan State University to work on the family freighter. Her adventures included facing a fierce winter storm in the Atlantic and witnessing ocean wonders (“Off the coast of Maryland, I went aft one night and saw phosphorescent algae churned up from the prop off the stern. It was magical—mesmerizing”). Later, she saw the dissolution of her family in Florida. She then bounced around the country, working different jobs before catching on at General Motors and breaking new ground for women in its financial sector. She balanced a booming career, a troublesome marriage, and continuing medical problems. Thomson has a talent for vividly describing a setting—she can remember the furniture in a house, the interior of the family car, and the route she walked to school. But this ability doesn’t extend to the more salient details that would pull a memoir together. The book, which features a few photos, often reads more like a list of events than an exploration of an incredible life. It lacks the particulars that would put readers in the scene and allow them to see what’s happening and feel the weight of it. When recounting her parents’ troubles, she writes: “My parents were gone for a while, replaced by a very stern and unpleasant white-uniformed-with-cap nurse.” They eventually returned, but there is no information about how this happened, the children’s reaction when they first met the nurse, or anything that passed between them.
An intriguing but uneven account of a remarkable woman triumphing over adversity.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5371-3744-5
Page Count: 242
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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