The main question is whether Noble was better served in the mental health system, or outside of it, and the answers she...
Noble’s story of living with dissociative identity disorder and of being misdiagnosed, misunderstood and adrift in society.
The author’s powerful memoir begins right from the dedication: "This book is dedicated to our much-loved daughter Aimee, the sunshine of my life, and our wonderful therapist for her footsteps in the sand." Noble isn't referring to a husband or partner with "our"—she's referring to herself. More specifically, herselves: Noble has more than 20 identified personalities, 14 of which are individually renowned artists with their own distinct styles and strengths. Throughout the book, the author switches between “our” and “my,” heightening the connection of readers to the story. Growing up, her parents struggled with their own problems, as individuals and as a couple, which added to Noble's struggle with being overlooked while she found ways to compensate for the growing discord in her head. As the difficulties of adolescence compounded her challenges, the compensations became inadequate and she found herself—the self she identified as her primary personality at the time—awaking in the hospital more frequently. But little came of the hospitalizations. As Noble began to tentatively form connections with others, she found the ground under her feet shifting constantly: Who had she met? With whom did she do this activity, or that one? Which personality was responsible for the teenage misbehaviors? These and other similar questions form the core of the narrative.
The main question is whether Noble was better served in the mental health system, or outside of it, and the answers she reaches trying to grow into adulthood and motherhood are at once jarring and deeply moving.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61374-470-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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