An insightful and touching testament to enduring love.
In this spiritual healing guide, the husband of an artist and therapist who died of brain cancer showcases her drawings and writings, as well as his own journal entries and poems.
In the winter of 2012, Judy Smoot embarked on an exciting new direction in her life: She’d enrolled in a two-and-a-half-year certification course by the Expressive Arts Florida Institute. Later, she and her husband, Roy Smoot, sold their family home of 25 years in Westerville, Ohio, and relocated to a lovely rural cottage in the southeastern part of the state. In the fall of 2015, however, “came the nightmare we never anticipated,” Roy writes: Judy was diagnosed with glioblastoma—the same aggressive brain cancer that had taken the life of her beloved aunt. This book is Roy’s posthumous collection of Judy’s expressive art (including mandalas with titles such as “Solace in the Cycle”) and journal entries, which often included meditations on biblical and other readings. Her writings date from prior to her diagnosis, during her treatments, and after she experienced a stroke; by the time of her death in 2016, she’d reached a state of spiritual acceptance. Roy also includes several of his own journal entries from the same time periods, and the book’s final section features the poems he wrote as he worked through his grieving process, culminating with the one that gives this book its title, which reads in part: “Love, grief / Joy, sadness / Laughter, sobs and tears / … / It all belongs.” Roy notes that reading Judy’s journals was a key element in his healing, and his inclusion of her thoughts in this book may offer inspirational support to others; she’d been a hospice volunteer and ran a nonprofit supporting the chronically ill. Both Judy and Roy (who are credited as co-authors, along with collaborator Folse) offer tangible ideas for readers facing similar circumstances—most particularly, they recommend engaging in expressive art and journal writing. Roy’s habit of writing in public, for example, led him to experience important conversations and make new connections.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9780982696064
Page Count: 299
Publisher: SparkPoint Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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