A charming, detailed running account that should appeal to fans of endurance stories.
A memoir tells the story of how a man ran 35 marathons in 35 days in Ireland.
Having lost his motivation as a sprinter, 20-year-old Corcoran was already contemplating finding his way back into running when his father had a stroke in 2011. The conditions were a perfect storm for an impetuous idea. The author would be of little use back home for his father’s recovery. Still in college, Corcoran was of an age that allowed him to take big, foolish chances and healthy enough to give his body a beating. Inspired partly by comedian Eddie Izzard’s Eddie Iz Runningdocumentary, chronicling 43 marathons in 51 days, the author hit on the idea of running a complete lap of Ireland to raise money for the Irish Heart Foundation, the brain injury unit at the National Rehabilitation Hospital, and Football Village of Hope, a charity his father helped establish. The story is told in a conversational style, starting out as a traditional memoir of Corcoran’s early dedication to sprinting and how his family gave him the encouragement and discipline to keep at it, turning into more of a tour diary once the run begins. He spares no detail, from his extensive preparation to his troubles holding charitable organizations to their promises of logistical support. On the road, readers see the author’s every ache and pain from the full 35-day course, from coping with blisters and burns to his friends pestering him as he was running by repeatedly screeching the song “Use Me” from a car as they followed along. The narrative can get technical at times, talking of physios and specific running techniques and training methods. But Corcoran treads lightly, keeping his sense of humor throughout. And some of the prose is beautiful: “Some days it was ballerina slippers, graceful efficiency; some days it was boxing gloves, biting down on the gumshield, swinging wild fists.”
A charming, detailed running account that should appeal to fans of endurance stories.Pub Date: June 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1838365004
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Tivoli Publishing House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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