Readers will wish Greer was their conspiratorial best friend.
A memoir by a rare breed of Hollywood actress: happy, well-adjusted and working.
Greer, who has appeared in nearly 100 movies and TV roles (this is her first book), knows she is lucky. Her unconventional parents—her mother was fired from a convent before she could take her final vows as a nun—wholeheartedly supported her teenage ballet and acting aspirations, and she got cast, after her first audition, in a movie with David Schwimmer. This is not a Hollywood roman à clef; Greer doesn't dish and is amazed by and grateful for her good fortune. She embodies the role she calls "the ultimate movie best friend…funny, cute, sassy and approachable." She is so approachable, in fact, that people who believe they recognize her routinely ask, "What do I know you from?" Her initial response: "First of all, hi." During her 15-year career, she has become proficient at what she calls "fan profiling.” Eager to help, she asks, "What are you into?" and intuits by the questioner's clothes, age and sex which productions they may have seen her in. It could be from one (or several) of her wide-ranging roles, such as Arrested Development, Two and a Half Men, The Wedding Planner or 13 Going on 30. Greer is an engaging and witty storyteller, at turns wistful (of her beloved hometown, she writes, "Detroit is America's sad family member who can't catch a break") and unsparingly honest ("I used to be more ugly”). She is also willing to laugh at some of her more absurd can-you-believe-it stories—e.g., when she finally got the apartment she always dreamed of, beneath the iconic HOLLYWOOD sign, it turned out to be full of cockroaches and thieves and constantly under the watch of police helicopters.
Readers will wish Greer was their conspiratorial best friend.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-53788-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
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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