An engaging and edifying look at one woman’s Jungian journey.
This novelistic memoir explores a woman’s lifelong spiritual quest.
The story of the main character, Susan, begins before she is born. Susan, as a soul (with the name of Soonam), makes the decision to incarnate on Earth. Her arrival occurs in 1947. Even though this is a choice on her part, she often wonders as a child what exactly she’s doing on the planet. By 1969, she’s married and living in Japan. A few years later, she’s divorced and residing in New York City, where she digs into topics such as the unconscious and God energy. These subjects lead her to the eminent psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Jung’s work will play a major role in her life. The narrative follows Susan over the decades as she spends time in different relationships, earns a Ph.D. in psychology, and adopts a daughter named Charlotte. Throughout it all, the author examines concepts such as intuition and astral projection, which she further develops for readers with suggested exercises. For instance, if they want to enlist the help of their unconscious, they can focus on a “spontaneous fantasy” and observe it closely. As Susan navigates both the changing times and “the ego’s willfulness,” she has much to uncover. The excavating isn’t always easy; at one point, she reflects how, at the end of a relationship, she wishes she could receive a refund for the last 10 years. Plunket’s story skillfully illustrates how humans are “complicated beings with a lot going on.” Much of the tale’s appeal comes from seeing how Susan deals with this complexity during her wide-ranging spiritual odyssey. But the ambitious memoir can be dry at times. Assertions such as “Joy is the state of mind which creates the frequency to allow your desires to manifest” tend to be clunky rather than revelatory. Still, Plunket does a fine job of balancing Susan’s practical world and the dreamier aspects of her existence.
An engaging and edifying look at one woman’s Jungian journey.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781803415239
Page Count: 184
Publisher: 6Th Books
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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