Drenched with sad yearning, yet narrated with simplicity in the limpid singsong that distinguishes his oral as well as written narrative, Wiesel's memoir reveals much, if not enough, about the man whose purpose in life has been to testify to the fate of his people. Journalist, novelist (A Beggar in Jerusalem, 1969; The Forgotten, 1992, etc.), moralist, witness to the Holocaust (Night, 1960): This is the Wiesel we have always known. What do we learn about the unknown Wiesel as he tells of his life from his childhood in the Transylvanian town of Sighet through his marriage in 1969, where this volume ends? Vividly recreating the intense Jewish life of Sighet, he paints a young Elie who's a dreamer and a mystic. One of the most engaging (and tragic) episodes is his aattempt with two friends to use the Kabbalah to force the arrival of the Messiah. This hubristic act of idealism ends with two of the boys falling mad. Later, with disarming honesty, Wiesel depicts the shy, sexually and politically naive, overly serious teenager who arrived in Paris in the late '40s. We read of his timid first kiss with Hanna, the beautiful young woman who proposed marriage to him; his more fervent first kiss with Kathleen, a Gentile who was engaged to another man. But when he meets his wife-to-be, Wiesel not unexpectedly falls silent about romance. Similarly, he alludes to a religious crisis but doesn't elaborate on the battle that must have raged inside him. Much of the volume relates the extraordinary people Wiesel has met, from Moshe the beadle, Sighet's first witness to Germany's Final Solution; to Joseph Givon, an adventurer who may or may not have been a double agent; to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who challenged the author to a baffling drinking contest one holiday evening. Through it all Wiesel testifies vividly indeed to Jewish history: the birth of Israel, the Six-Day War, the capture of Jerusalem. And he ceaselessly pricks the conscience of a world that thinks it is possible to have heard "enough" about the Holocaust.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43916-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Did you like this book?
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
12
GET IT
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. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Did you like this book?
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2022 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
