A travelogue filled with historic places, but its personal stories provide its highlights.
A 55-year-old woman and her husband uproot their lives to take a yearlong European tour in Bohr’s debut memoir.
Relatively few people get the opportunity to travel abroad for a significant amount of time, exploring culture, history, and cuisine in different parts of the world. Bohr got not one, but two such chances. Her first, as a graduate student, was a bare-bones, laissez-faire journey, but her second, as a wife and mother who qualified for senior discounts, was a much more carefully planned-out affair. In fact, it took Bohr and her husband, Joe, many years to plan their own “gap year,” in which they hoped to visit more than 20 different countries. Most readers may find their preparations daunting, if not downright terrifying: they developed and executed a calculated savings plan, quit their jobs, and sold half of their worldly belongings. By sticking to their schedule and budget, they managed to see several nations throughout Europe and even took a foray into Africa. The journey, which may seem like an all-but-impossible undertaking, is made very real through Bohr’s frank accounts of their planning, discussions, and decision-making over several years to make their trip a reality. Bohr frequently details the histories of the sites they visited, often providing as much background information as a comprehensive travel guide. Some readers may wish that she had included pictures or illustrations to complement her descriptions, however. At more than 350 pages, this isn’t a memoir to breeze through. Indeed, at times, the lengthy, myriad descriptions and leisurely pace may remind some of watching a friend’s vacation slide show. Bohr shines, however, when she provides glimpses of herself as a whole person, not simply a traveler; for example, her disappointment about their visit to Morocco, where she experienced pushy salespeople, con artists, refuse-filled streets, and dispiriting poverty, is at once visceral and relatable. Her book is an excellent choice for armchair travelers who want to see the sites but are in no particular hurry to do so.
A travelogue filled with historic places, but its personal stories provide its highlights.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63152-820-0
Page Count: 372
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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