A poignant memoir delivers a powerful tribute to love and grit.
A professor offers a painful recollection of the path she and her husband traveled during his battle with cancer.
Shelton (Literacy Policies and Practices in Conflict, 2014, etc.) stepped away from her academic writing to pen this memoir. She’s an avid note taker, and her coping mechanism for dealing with the barrage of medical information and treatment options for her husband, Jack, that seemed to be always in flux was to write everything down as it was happening. Her book, written primarily in the present tense, brings readers along with her on this arduous journey. From the first crisis on Dec. 27, 2011, “Terrible Tuesday,” when Jack suffered a sudden seizure, until his death 5 months and 13 days later, Shelton records everything—the details of the disease (Stage IV lung cancer that metastasized to his brain and, it turned out, to his hip), the prognosis for “longevity” (three to six months), the various phases of treatment, and the author’s own fragile emotional state as she helped Jack navigate this onslaught. She never left his side. Whenever he was in the hospital, she was living there with him. Shelton is a literacy professor, and her narrative is lucid and graphic: “My face is wet from my tears and I can’t control my sobs. My chest is jerking. My hands are shaking.” As grim as the story is, there is also respite during the quiet moments when she reflects on the many special moments in their relationship, beginning with their first meeting in 1977. At these times, the narrative becomes a love story. Constantly trying to balance that fine line between reality and hope, Shelton struggled to understand every detail of the treatments and recommendations that came rushing at the couple like a tsunami of opinions, tactful and otherwise, while terrified of the upended life that lay ahead of her. Ultimately, she must, of course, learn to live again, without Jack physically by her side: “But my brain had been injured by the stress of Jack’s illness and death. Grief continued to impair me cognitively. I had to find a way to heal.” And she does: “I eat well, drink very little, exercise daily, and laugh as much as I can.”
A poignant memoir delivers a powerful tribute to love and grit.Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-942146-36-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Garn Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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