Well written, though without the broader appeal of, say, Rick Atkinson or Richard Overy; a minor but interesting take on a...
An American combat doctor’s memories of war, as filtered through his novelist daughter (The Art of Absence, 2011, etc.).
From an Italian immigrant family, Army Cpt. Bart Passanante found himself “aimed in the opposite direction” of his parents’ passage earlier in the century, bound as a military doctor to the war theaters of Africa, Italy, and eventually France and Germany. Armed with a trove of letters—more than 1,365 pages—from Bart to her mother, Bertie, written “almost daily in an attempt to span the jagged cleft the war had sliced into their marriage,” the latter-day Passanante explores her father’s recollection of events and retraces his steps on some parts of the journey (“When I first read Bart’s description of his days in the boxcar to Algeria, I had no doubts that I, too, wanted to travel there”). The author takes clear pleasure in her father’s mastery of English, overcoming the linguistic gulf by which immigrants are easily sorted into the category of “Other,” and she has a good eye for the telling detail and for when to quote directly and when to paraphrase. Her father tends to understatement, but sometimes he lets slip just how dangerous his situation is, as when he is preparing to board the landing craft for the invasion of France on D-Day: “Somehow, I’ve become fatalistic about the whole thing,” he writes. “I’m not as scared as I thought I was going to be.” Though the daughter’s commentary is less immediate, there are some fine moments, too, such as her meeting a Frenchwoman who, wounded in crossfire, may have been treated by Dr. Passanante decades earlier. As she writes after their tender encounter, “in the way that I missed my father in the months before he died…when his mind had already been spirited away by Alzheimer’s disease, I missed her already.”
Well written, though without the broader appeal of, say, Rick Atkinson or Richard Overy; a minor but interesting take on a major conflict.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8142-5424-0
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Mad Creek/Ohio State Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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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