Sets the record straight about a so-called medical miracle.
A young woman’s revealing memoir of life after a heart transplant.
Silverstein was a 23-year-old law student when tightness in her chest and episodes of fainting first sent her to her family doctor, who advised her to eat more salt to get her blood pressure up. A year later the same doctor told her she had congestive heart failure and sent her to a cardiologist. After various tests, including a heart biopsy, he told her she had heart muscle damage, presumably from a virus, put her on medication and then referred her to another cardiologist, who sent her to another. The author’s keen assessments of her doctors, her confrontations with them, her expectations and disappointments are among the book’s best moments. After a near-fatal episode of ventricular fibrillation, Silverstein agreed to a heart transplant, unaware of how it would change her life. Shortly after her 25th birthday she received a healthy 13-year-old heart. She had to take daily medications, including strong immunosuppressives to prevent rejection. “I had made a deal with the Devil,” she writes. “In return for one precariously pulsating organ, I would endure a lifetime of poison and all its ill effects.” Her attempts to lead a normal life included marrying one year later, finishing law school, practicing law and eventually becoming an adoptive mother. At her wedding, she successfully posed as a healthy bride, but continuing to keep up appearances was extraordinarily difficult. Hospitalizations for invasive tests occurred regularly; infections plagued her weakened and vulnerable immune system. While working to create the impression of health and energy, she often felt nauseated, exhausted and misunderstood. When, after 17 years a suspicious lump suggested she might have cancer, she was ready to call it quits. She didn’t, however, and the heart that was expected to last no more than a decade has now kept Silverstein alive for 19 years.
Sets the record straight about a so-called medical miracle.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1854-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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