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Larry's Kidney: Being the Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride...

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Larry's Kidney: Being the Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride... Cover

ISBN13: 9780061708701
ISBN10: 0061708704
Condition: Standard
Dustjacket: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

The Adventure of a Lifetime (Really): A Madcap Odyssey of the Heart (& a Kidney) on the Far Side of the Earth (Hello, China!?)

Larry Feldman desperately needed a kidney. After two god-awful years on dialysis, watching his life ebb away while waiting on a transplant list behind 74,000 other Americans, the gun-toting couch potato decided to risk everything and travel to China, the controversial kingdom of organ transplants. But Larry urgently needed his cousin Daniel's help...even though they have been on the outs with each other for years.

Sure, Chinese law forbids transplants to Westerners, but that didn't faze Larry. He was confident he could shake out a single pre-loved kidney from the country's 1.3 billion people. But wait: Larry was never one to "not" get his money's worth. Since he was already shelling out for a trip to China, he decided to make it a twofer: He arranged to pick up an (e-)mail-order bride while he was at it. After a tireless search on the Internet, he already knew the woman he wanted.

Backed by a quarter-million-dollar disability settlement (was it the icicle falling on his head or the truck rear-ending him?) and armed with an all-purpose letter of recommendation from a devoted nun, Larry ventured forth from his Florida condo on an unlikely search for life and love in the most cryptic country on earth. Conflicted about the ethical issues surrounding medical tourism, and with no time to cultivate even a single Chinese contact, Daniel left the next day, on his own dime.

So begins the quest of two star-crossed cousins to rejuvenate Larry's failing body and ever-romantic heart, while avoiding getting tossed into a Chinese slammer. An unforgettable adventure filled with Red Guards who waltz at midnight and former enemies who prove more true than family, Larry's Kidney is the funniest yet most heartwarming book of the year.

Review:

"Larry's Kidney," a stranger-than-fiction memoir by Daniel Asa Rose, serves as an enjoyable testament to the lengths to which we sometimes go to help family, even when doing so is a terrible, terrible idea. The absurdly long subtitle — "Being the Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant — and Save His Life"... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review)

Review:

"Rose's writing is by turns hyperbolic and hallucinatory....Sometimes slapstick, sometimes caustic, Larry's Kidney is also sweet and thoughtful as Daniel finds himself improbably falling in love with China." Shelf Awareness

Review:

"[A] side-splitting tour de force....Second-time memoirist Rose recounts their exploits with an insuperable wit that will appeal to readers who crave unrelenting humor." Library Journal

Review:

"The rare comedy that is also a page-turner." Boston Globe

Synopsis:

A wild-and-crazy memoir, Larry's Kidney chronicles the author's trip to Beijing to help his black-sheep cousin receive an illegal kidney transplant, collect a mail-order bride, and restore East-West relations while they're at it.
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About the Author

Daniel Asa Rose has won an O. Henry Prize, two PEN Fiction Awards, and an NEA Fellowship. Formerly arts and culture editor of Forward and currently an editor of the international literary magazine the Reading Room, he has written for the New Yorker, Esquire, Vanity Fair, GQ, and the New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the acclaimed memoir Hiding Places: A Father and His Sons Retrace Their Family's Escape from the Holocaust. He lives in a colonial farmhouse in Massachusetts.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Grady Harp, July 22, 2009 (view all comments by Grady Harp)
'Huwwo' summarizes a character in one word!

Daniel Asa Rose has a winner on his hands with LARRY'S KIDNEY'. He has the skill and the comic timing to pull off an unlikely caper story with lightness, hearty laughter, tenderness, and wisdom, creating a book that most likely will go directly to film. It is a fast summer read that is brimming over with some of the funniest conversations between the characters while keeping an eye focused on the very fast paced story that borders on a little miracle of writing.

Strange, bizarre, out of the ordinary walk of life Larry is a victim of renal failure and needs a kidney transplant. Living in the USA he is one of many potential recipients for a kidney transplant, a fact that stimulates the idea of traveling to China in an illegal attempt to find a new kidney. He enlists the help of his sturdy but estranged cousin Dan to accompany him to China and once there Larry introduces Dan to his email order bride Mary (a far cry from the young and beautiful description transmitted by the potential bride via email!). Larry and Dan (and Mary) unite in Larry's medical venture and the result is a story of hilarious incidents, moments of intrigue, a cultural awakening, and an exploration of the meaning of kinship and friendship and love spread among not only the trio but across the country of China.

Some critics may feel that focusing a comic novel on a subject as serious as Kidney Transplantation is inappropriate, but the manner in which Rose tells his story is light hearted and far from parody that the subject of finding a means to save the life of an unlikely candidate could have been. Though this is not a heavy novel (!), it goes beyond an entertaining comedic read and carries some important sociologic and psychologic implications. A very good read!

Grady Harp
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780061708701
Subtitle:
Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant--and Save His Life
Author:
Rose, Daniel Asa
Author:
Daniel Asa Rose
Author:
Daniel Asa Rose
Publisher:
William Morrow
Subject:
Personal Memoirs
Subject:
Authors, American - 21st century
Subject:
Kidneys -- Transplantation -- Patients.
Copyright:
2009
Edition Description:
Hardcover
Publication Date:
20090512
Binding:
Hardback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
320
Dimensions:
9 x 6 x 1.05 in 16.48 oz
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Related Subjects

Biography » General
Health and Self-Help » Health and Medicine » Medical Biographies
Health and Self-Help » Self-Help » Memoirs

Larry's Kidney: Being the Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride... Used Hardcover
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$2.95 In Stock
Product details 320 pages William Morrow & Company - English 9780061708701 Reviews:
"Review" by , "Rose's writing is by turns hyperbolic and hallucinatory....Sometimes slapstick, sometimes caustic, Larry's Kidney is also sweet and thoughtful as Daniel finds himself improbably falling in love with China."
"Review" by , "[A] side-splitting tour de force....Second-time memoirist Rose recounts their exploits with an insuperable wit that will appeal to readers who crave unrelenting humor."
"Review" by , "The rare comedy that is also a page-turner."
"Synopsis" by , A wild-and-crazy memoir, Larry's Kidney chronicles the author's trip to Beijing to help his black-sheep cousin receive an illegal kidney transplant, collect a mail-order bride, and restore East-West relations while they're at it.
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