Alexander’s love affair with French, he concludes in this wry and warmhearted memoir, has reaped unexpected rewards.
A charming memoir by a passionate Francophile.
At the age of 57, Alexander (52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust, 2010, etc.) decided to fulfill his lifelong dream of learning French—the first step, he thought, to transforming himself into a Frenchman. “I have such an inexplicable affinity for all things French that I wonder if I was French in a former life,” he writes. Even though many second-language researchers believe that after adolescence, few students “will ever achieve near-native proficiency in a foreign language,” Alexander was determined to try. His 13-month marathon of language learning included five levels of Rosetta Stone, two Pimsleur audio courses, hundreds of podcasts, all 52 TV episodes of French in Action, two immersion classes (one, in France, lasting two weeks), reading dual-language books, watching TV5Monde, emailing with a French pen pal and Skyping with another. The author also studied the history of the language, its unfathomable assignment of gender to nouns, and some curious idioms, and he considers how vocabulary reflects social assumptions: Why, he wonders, is there a word for husband but not for wife? For son but not for daughter? After all his efforts, he realizes that he has learned “a lot of French,” but “I have not learned French. And that is a major distinction.” But he did make significant progress: At the beginning of his project, he had an MRI to determine his brain’s activity when listening to French or Japanese, which he knows not at all. A year later, his scans show markedly more activity when hearing French, and he scored higher on a college entrance exam, too. But most exciting was his vast improvement on a cognitive assessment test. “Studying French,” he announces joyfully, “has been like drinking from a mental fountain of youth!”
Alexander’s love affair with French, he concludes in this wry and warmhearted memoir, has reaped unexpected rewards.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61620-020-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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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