A beautifully written but painful series of meditations.
A kaleidoscopic vision of what it means to care for an ailing relative.
As Casey (editor, Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression, 2001) tells it in the introduction to this collection of essays, she got off easy. Though she saw her sister, Maude, through hospitalization for a manic episode and then a five-month long bout of depression, she points out that the family did eventually see her through: “Once Maud got back on her feet, she returned to her life with tenacity and success,” writes Casey. “My family, meanwhile, was given the pleasure and satisfaction of believing that our hard work had paid off, that we had helped Maud.” But for many of the writers of these almost-uniformly devastating accounts, the only end in sight is death, and the drama lies in learning how to deal with it. Helen Schulman writes about watching her father’s slow decline from his position as chief resident at Mt. Sinai to a bedridden mess with so many problems they didn’t know what killed him until the autopsy. Sam Lipsyte tells of moving back in with his mother to recover from drug addiction only to become her caretaker when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Ann Hood writes of the sudden death of her five-year-old daughter, ravaged by the common strep virus, while Julia Glass writes from the other side of the hospital bed about her experience being cared for as a breast-cancer patient. Stories of Alzheimer’s, M.S. and cancer abound, as well as tales of coping with a child’s autism or a husband’s sudden catastrophic head injury. Thankfully, there are stories of recovery, but they challenge the wishful idea that recovery means a return to life as it had been. Each essay—other contributors include Julia Alvarez, Jerome Groopman and Anne Landsman—explores the burdens, terrors, sorrows and, occasionally, joy involved in undergoing a terrible ordeal with someone you love.
A beautifully written but painful series of meditations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-087530-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.
An analysis of our emotions and the skills required to understand them.
We all have emotions, but how many of us have the vocabulary to accurately describe our experiences or to understand how our emotions affect the way we act? In this guide to help readers with their emotions, Brackett, the founding director of Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, presents a five-step method he calls R.U.L.E.R.: We need to recognize our emotions, understand what has caused them, be able to label them with precise terms and descriptions, know how to safely and effectively express them, and be able to regulate them in productive ways. The author walks readers through each step and provides an intriguing tool to use to help identify a specific emotion. Brackett introduces a four-square grid called a Mood Meter, which allows one to define where an emotion falls based on pleasantness and energy. He also uses four colors for each quadrant: yellow for high pleasantness and high energy, red for low pleasantness and high energy, green for high pleasantness and low energy, and blue for low pleasantness and low energy. The idea is to identify where an emotion lies in this grid in order to put the R.U.L.E.R. method to good use. The author’s research is wide-ranging, and his interweaving of his personal story with the data helps make the book less academic and more accessible to general readers. It’s particularly useful for parents and teachers who want to help children learn to handle difficult emotions so that they can thrive rather than be overwhelmed by them. The author’s system will also find use in the workplace. “Emotions are the most powerful force inside the workplace—as they are in every human endeavor,” writes Brackett. “They influence everything from leadership effectiveness to building and maintaining complex relationships, from innovation to customer relations.”
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-21284-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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