A well-told saga of recovery from loss and emotional breakdown and a tribute to ordinary blessings that made it possible.
A woman writes about her life experiences in order to cope with grief, addictions, and crises in this heartfelt memoir and self-help book.
Manning (Where the Water Meets the Sand, 2016), a retired middle school teacher and school district superintendent, looks back on a lifetime of traumas, including the death of her father when she was 9 years old; a teenage pregnancy that ended in adoption; and the death of her first husband in the Vietnam War, which left her a single mother to an infant daughter. She also dealt with psychological problems, including alcoholism, bulimia, the urge to cut herself, and major depression. An eight-month hospitalization in a Topeka, Kansas, psychiatric clinic in 1970 got her started writing about her troubles as a form of therapy, which she recommends to readers. Each chapter covers autobiographical reminiscences loosely arranged by theme; some recount fraught episodes in her life and others revisit positive memories and influences, including mentors who’ve helped her, family meal traditions, favorite recipes, and memorable musical performances. At the end of each chapter, she suggests writing exercises that treat similar themes and offers a few literary tips to make them more detailed and immediate. Along the way, she mixes in recovery teachings about maintaining sobriety (reciting the serenity prayer is a daily ritual for her), cultivating a sense of gratitude, and taking life one day at a time. Although the book is a bit of a ramble and sometimes repeats itself, Manning is a fluent writer who stocks her narratives with vivid anecdotes and character sketches. In darker moments of morbid obsession, her prose is truly harrowing: “I remember the immediate relief as I watched the blood drip from my wrist into the toilet. I stared down into the bowl, hypnotized by the swirling pink clouds, and rested my head on the toilet seat, no longer feeling alone, panicked, or crazy.” The book isn’t very useful as a manual for writing, but Manning’s creative explorations make her psychological insights feel hard-won and credible.
A well-told saga of recovery from loss and emotional breakdown and a tribute to ordinary blessings that made it possible.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63152-456-1
Page Count: 153
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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