An intimate, insightful meditation on the science, art, and business of healing.
A doctor reflects on medicine and the human drama underlying it in this heartfelt memoir.
Friedman recaps his 44-year career as a neurosurgeon, including a long tenure as the chairman of the department of neurosurgery at the University of Florida, in loose, episodic chapters full of reminiscences, medical lore, case studies, policy briefs, and philosophical musings. Among the grab bag are his recollections of confusion, anxiety, and sleep deprivation as a resident; detailed descriptions of surgical procedures; a poignant elegy on his mother’s decline and death from a brain tumor; explanations of his groundbreaking research into using electrical monitoring of neural activity to guide neurosurgeons; a sharp critique of American health care, which he calls a “disgrace” for its high cost, poor quality, and lack of universal coverage; a look at his own efforts to improve quality in his neurosurgery department with checklists and meticulous teamwork; a lengthy account of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, complete with the autopsy report; and a plangent chapter authored by his colleague Jobyna Whiting recounting an incident in which she treated a doomed victim of an auto accident and the shame-ridden man who killed her. Friedman’s narrative is a bit of a ramble, but his workmanlike prose and lucid discussions of complex medical issues make the many digressions a pleasure to follow. Personal relationships are central to his portrait of doctoring: He’s warmly appreciative of supportive teachers and mentors—and critical of the “impatience” and “cruelty” of others—and conveys both the camaraderie of medical practice and the occasional eruptions of poisonous office politics, including bogus allegations of financial misconduct leveled at him by an underperforming surgeon he tried to fire. He’s at his best in describing the emotional turmoil that besets every doctor amid the vagaries of life and death. (“A woman with everything to live for had come to me for help and, instead, had died….And thus began the process that occurs every time I have a bad result: relentless self-doubt and self-loathing. You veer into imposter syndrome where, for a time, you believe that you’re not really a good neurosurgeon, that you are entirely unworthy.”) The result is a frank, revealing view of a doctor’s experience.
An intimate, insightful meditation on the science, art, and business of healing.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63576-754-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Radius Book Group
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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