A cautionary but sympathetic story of a man obsessed, though less perniciously than most.
Sensitive chronicle of a complex man who came to Africa to found his own kingdom, built a castle for the woman he loved, and ruled his subjects with a firm but benevolent hand.
Born in 1873, Stewart Gore-Browne was a Victorian shaped by the ideals of his time: service to country, the betterment of those less fortunate, romantic love for a perfect, unattainable woman. Educated at Harrow, he spent most of his time with his father’s younger sister Ethel and her wealthy, much older husband Hugh. Intelligent and beautiful, Ethel inspired a lifelong devotion in Gore-Browne, who wrote to her regularly, confided in her, and dreamed that she would someday come to live in the “Africa house” he built for her. In early 1914, seconded to an Anglo-Belgian Boundary Commission as a British officer, Gore-Browne first saw Shiwa Ngandu, the “Lake of the Royal Crocodiles” in what is today northern Zambia, and immediately recognized it as the kingdom he had dreamed of. World War I intervened, but in 1920 he was back in Africa, the owner of 23,000 acres, at work on the house and the model village he had so long planned. Food, furniture, and all other necessities had to travel by land and canoe more than 400 miles from the nearest rail halt, and Lamb, foreign-affairs correspondent of London’s Sunday Times, vividly details how extraordinary Gore-Browne’s overly ambitious achievement was. In a place where lions and crocodile regularly ate the unwary and leopards peeked in the windows, he built a three-story building, “part Tuscan manor house, part grand English ancestral home,” surrounded by gardens and orchards. Lamb (The Sewing Circles of Herat, not reviewed) chronicles his unhappy marriage to a much younger woman, his failed agricultural ventures, and the house’s evolution into a famous landmark. She also describes Gore-Browne’s commitment to Zambia’s independence and to African education, as well as his friendship with the newly independent nation’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda.
A cautionary but sympathetic story of a man obsessed, though less perniciously than most.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-073587-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2004
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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