Warm encouragement for healing troubled relationships.
A road map toward a better marriage.
The Gottmans, couples therapists and founders of the Gottman Institute to research and support healthy relationships, draw on their experience studying more than 40,000 couples to offer “a bite-sized, seven-day action plan” for taking a marriage in a new direction. From their work with newly partnered same-sex couples, long-married pairs with children and grandchildren, partners overwhelmed by busy careers and young children, couples trapped in poverty, and even some experiencing “mild to moderate domestic violence, where both partners can become violent during an escalated conflict, but no injuries are inflicted and both want to change,” the authors have devised simple practices designed to teach partners how to relate to each other in productive ways. They invented their strategies, many of which are fairly obvious, in response to their clients’ problems and by observing the behavior of happy couples. “What we see in happy, thriving relationships,” they write, “is that people do genuinely admire each other for all the wonderful qualities they each possess, and when it comes to the inevitable not-so-wonderful qualities, they’re able to have compassion for each other’s enduring vulnerabilities.” They identify attitudes they call “the Four Horsemen—criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling,” which act as destructive forces. They can be overcome, however, through such practices as checking in with your partner for 10 minutes each day, expressing gratitude, giving genuine compliments, and, simply, touching. It’s also vital to express one’s needs and not expect a partner to be a mind reader: “We all have needs. We all have valid desires. But we don’t say them.” For couples who seem to be living parallel lives, roommates rather than loving partners, they recommend setting aside a weekly date night. “The ‘sex-starved marriage,’ they’ve observed, “really isn’t only about sex, fundamentally. It’s one where people have, over time, shut down all forms of openness: to sensuality, to adventure, to play and silliness, to learning together.”
Warm encouragement for healing troubled relationships.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-143-13663-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Penguin Life
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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