Lord Peter Wimsey’s creator turns her attention—and correspondence—to the Lord Himself. In this second volume of letters, Sayers switches roles from beloved detective novelist to an increasingly well-regarded if sometimes beleaguered Christian playwright. It’s a testament to her strength as a writer and thinker that Sayers confines her new role —not [to] prophet, but only sort of painstaking explainer of official dogma.— These letters include lively, substantive arguments with religious leaders, politicians, collaborators, and detractors. The war years were productive ones for Sayers, who wrote five plays for the stage and others for radio, lectured, wrote articles, and published two books, all concerning Christianity. Sayers commendably turns her pen’s power to the war itself, seizing the opportunity to connect religion with reality. On September 10, 1939, one week after Great Britain went to war with Germany, Sayers wrote to a Christian newsletter editor that the Church ought to “say something loud and definite” about what’s happening in the world. She’s at her finest when she corrects distortions of her work and responds to sincere inquiries, which in turn inspire thoughtful explication. With humility, intelligence, clarity, and an occasional barb, she eschews ignorance. Her task is to imaginatively explain Christian doctrine, which, she reminds her correspondents, isn’t her creation: “I didn’t think it was ‘my’ theology exactly; I thought it was the Church’s.” The price of this isn’t zealotry but monotony. With the exception of a scattered reference to her husband and some letters to her adolescent “unacknowledged” son, her letters focus almost exclusively on Christianity. Interestingly, the mystery surrounding her son gets solved, though not in her letters—Reynolds appends to this volume particulars about Sayers’s son, thus filling in a gap in his biography Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul (1993). Followers of Wimsey’s sleuthing may not enjoy following Sayers’s prolix letters on Christianity.
Pub Date: April 17, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18127-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
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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