A delightful exploration of childhood fantasy, rudely awakened by reality.
Barlow, the son of a Kansas farmer, escapes into a wonderful world of daydreams in this promising debut memoir.
At age 10, Barlow had little to smile about. Struck down by polio, he spent his time convalescing in a hospital, sharing his hopes and dreams with his young friend, Tim, a fellow patient who later died. The neighborhood kids pushed him around in his wheelchair after he went home—until they grow bored and started to call him names. Woody eventually recovered from polio, only to be diagnosed with a lazy eye that required a complex operation. Confronted by adversity at every turn, the young boy found solace in the landscape surrounding his father’s farm in Olathe, Kan., on the outskirts of Kansas City, Mo. Woody explored back roads on his bicycle and imagined himself as a Wild West gunslinger fighting off Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. At other times, he hung ropes from trees in his yard and became Tarzan, swinging from branch to branch. He pretended that an old woman in town was an evil storybook witch whose powers had to be neutralized, and set about formulating an elaborate plan to bring her to justice. Woody’s daydreams challenged the drudgery of his everyday life, but as he grew older the demands of adulthood bore down on him. He was mystified by women and sex, and strove for some amount of financial independence in the hope of buying a car. His dream world began to dissipate, and, in turn, the memoir loses some of its playful charm; the blunt pain of reality is hammered home when Woody, working a shift at the bowling alley, hears the announcement of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The author delivers his narrative in an affable, laid-back style with a distinctive wry wit. Throughout, the memoir successfully channels and finds catharsis in a land of make-believe often lost to adults. Unfortunately, the book loses its way, or perhaps its heart, in its latter portion when recalling Woody’s unremarkable adolescence.
A delightful exploration of childhood fantasy, rudely awakened by reality.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490952482
Page Count: 340
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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