Some poignant stories, lots of ambition, but the result is but a flicker of a flame.
The evolving fortunes of a large Boston firefighting family, the Cocoanut Grove fire of 1942, the changing racial politics of Bean Town, the redemptive powers of work and writing—all intermixed with accounts of the derring-do of fire-and-rescue teams.
Kenney—whose grandfather was among the first on the scene at the Cocoanut Grove and whose father and other relatives have worked in fire-related professions—takes a holiday from the writing of fiction thrillers (The Last Man, 2001, etc.) to construct his own family saga. He seems to have epic aspirations—a multigenerational story with weighty themes of life and death and sacrifice and sin and redemption (all seared by flames)—but the writing is so conventional, so unrelievedly ordinary, that the balloon of his narrative never inflates. The family’s involvement with the Cocoanut Grove fire is of signal importance. The author’s grandfather sustained injuries there that forced his early retirement. And years later, the author’s father (Sonny) became obsessed with the story of the fire, particularly with its origin (still uncertain at the time), and spent more than a dozen years researching the tragedy—interviewing survivors, reading all relevant documents and even promoting the theory that methyl chloride was the principal villain. Sonny, who’d never had any literary aspirations, even published a few articles on the subject. (He, too, had retired early from the Boston Fire Department for injury-related reasons.) Kenney deals with the ugly racial issues prominent in Boston during the 1970s and ’80s (forced busing, hiring quotas). A couple of his brothers failed to gain BFD positions because a judge had determined that the virtually all-white department must integrate, even if it meant employing less-qualified members of minority groups. The Kenneys, one and all, were outraged. The author deals, as well, with Sonny’s long-running (and often losing) battle with alcoholism. Late in life, he joined AA, which seems to be helping.
Some poignant stories, lots of ambition, but the result is but a flicker of a flame.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-58648-310-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2006
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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