The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead

Shields's book gives numerous facts, statistics, and quotations about birth, the body, growth, and death, many of them interesting. But they only serve as entrées to his real object of fascination: himself, and his mostly uninteresting life. Don Leslie does an admirable job, reading expressively; varying the pace; and varying the tone of his deep, slightly gravelly voice to indicate different speakers, scenes, levels of intimacy. Only rarely does he bobble a pronunciation or pick the wrong tone. But even he can't make a silk purse out of this self-absorbed sow's ear, by turns pointless, embarrassing, or maddening. In the midst of yet another witless anecdote, Shields says, "Who cares? I do." Yes, but few others will. W.M. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

February 4, 2008
Inspired by the immense vitality of his 90-something father, author Shields (Body Politic: The Great American Sports Machine) looks at the arc of a human life in order to come to terms with mortality. Organized into four stages of life-infancy and childhood, adolescence, adulthood and middle age, old age and death-Shields's short, snappy chapters are crafted from personal anecdotes (many featuring his wife and teenage daughter), literary-philosophical musing and enlightening scientific data, examining a wide range of human concerns relating to "the beauty and pathos in my body and his body and everybody else's body as well." Shields also visits historical and contemporary figures, from Sigmund Freud to John Ruskin and Woody Allen, for their thoughts on mortality; says Picasso, "One starts to get young at the age of sixty, and then it's too late." Shield's eclectic approach and personal voice makes this extended meditation on living and dying a pleasing and occasionally profound read.