5 results for "Literature"

The quiet boy

Winters, Ben H.
"In 2008, a cheerful ambulance-chasing lawyer named Jay Shenk persuades the grieving Keener family to sue a private LA hospital. Their son Wesley has been transformed by a routine surgery into a kind of golem, absent all normal functioning or personality, walking in endless empty circles around his hospital room. In 2019, Shenk - still in practice but a shell of his former self - is hired to defend Wesley Keener's father when he is charged with murder . . . the murder, as it turns out, of the expert witness from the 2008 hospital case. Shenk's adopted son, a fragile teenager in 2008, is a wayward adult, though he may find his purpose when he investigates what really happened to the murdered witness. Two thrilling trials braid together, medical malpractice and murder, jostling us back and forth in time. The Quiet Boy is a book full of mysteries, not only about the death of a brilliant scientist, not only about the outcome of the medical malpractice suit, but about the relationship between children and their parents, between the past and the present, between truth and lies. At the center of it all is Wesley Keener, endlessly walking, staring empty-eyed, in whose quiet, hollow body may lie the fate of humankind."--Publisher.
Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company 2021-05 438 pages

A journey round my skull

Karinthy, Frigyes
The distinguished Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy was sitting in a Budapest café, wondering whether to write a long-planned monograph on modern man or a new play, when he was disturbed by the roaring—so loud as to drown out all other noises—of a passing train. Soon it was gone, only to be succeeded by another. And another. Strange, Karinthy thought, it had been years since Budapest had streetcars. Only then did he realize he was suffering from an auditory hallucination of extraordinary intensity. What in fact Karinthy was suffering from was a brain tumor, not cancerous but hardly benign, though it was only much later—after spells of giddiness, fainting fits, friends remarking that his handwriting had altered, and books going blank before his eyes—that he consulted a doctor and embarked on a series of examinations that would lead to brain surgery. Karinthy’s description of his descent into illness and his observations of his symptoms, thoughts, and feelings, as well as of his friends’ and doctors’ varied responses to his predicament, are exact and engrossing and entirely free of self-pity. A Journey Round My Skull is not only an extraordinary piece of medical testimony, but a powerful work of literature—one that dances brilliantly on the edge of extinction.
New York Review Books 2008-03-11 288 pages

Ellie

Goldstein, Ellie
This empowering and up-lifting picture book by Ellie Goldstein will inspire young children to be free to become whoever they are. Ellie is a powerful story about determination to overcome challenges despite the assumptions of others. "I know I can do a lot!" When Ellie Goldstein was born with Down's Syndrome, doctors claimed she could do nothing. Today, she's a supermodel, gracing the covers of Vogue and Glamour, dancing and speaking up for others. This is the story of her 'can do' attitude and determination from the day of her birth to life as an internationally famous fashion model. Her story encourages children to know that they are each special and to overcome the challenges of life's set backs and frustrations and be seen. Told she would never walk, Ellie has danced in productions for the Royal Opera House. Told she would never learn; she's gained a college education. And told she would never talk; Ellie uses her voice as a disabled model to speak up for other people with Down's Syndrome, and to transform the face of fashion. Everyone is different but no matter who you are, you are free to be whoever you were made to be.
Starshine Books 2024-09-20 32 pages