A memoir from the shadows that’s just as fascinating as those that inhabit the spotlight.
A ghostwriter pens her own revealing story.
Cagan (Peace Is Possible, 2007, etc.) has worked as a professional writer for more than 20 years. On the surface, she’s lived an enviable, adventurous life, hobnobbing with the rich and famous and traveling the world. Yet her memoir is an honest, balanced reflection that follows the circuitous path she took to achieving peace and, perhaps, contentment. Cagan was a dancer for years before taking a foray into acting and eventually ending up as a writer. The self-confidence and discipline that Cagan learned in ballet helped her in many of her subsequent challenges and prepared her for the unconventional life she would ultimately lead. Later, as a ghostwriter, she learned the art of ordering the chaos of another person’s life and truly dissolving her own self to become “the other.” The memoir then reflects on her work as a writer in addition to other aspects of her past, such as failed marriages, her relationship with her mother, and the death of a loved one. She explores broad topics, such as religion and aging, offering numerous anecdotes and relating hard lessons she’s learned. It’s an intriguing and potentially frightening undertaking to move from composing others’ stories to exposing one’s own inner workings. As Cagan does so, she’s often candid, humorous, reflective, and remorseful; she doesn’t shy away from divulging the darker aspects of her life, including frequent drug use and abusive relationships. Her memoir takes a nonlinear, thematically organized approach. This strategy pays off as the chapters pull from different eras of her life, connected by thematic threads. In “Intrepid,” for example, the topics range from her father’s fearlessness to her own courage years later volunteering at an AIDS hospice. In the closing pages, Cagan wonders whether she’s “done enough” to pen an interesting memoir. Simply put: she has.
A memoir from the shadows that’s just as fascinating as those that inhabit the spotlight.Pub Date: June 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5053-1962-0
Page Count: 286
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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