by Claire Bidwell Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 2015
A touch morbid and obsessive, and in the end, probably not all that helpful to those struggling with grief.
An angst-ridden search for the afterlife.
Having lost both her parents and a close friend by her mid-20s, Smith (The Rules of Inheritance, 2012) has spent the rest of her life grappling with issues of grief and loss. This extends even to her profession as a therapist specializing in grief. In her second memoir, the author tracks her almost compulsive search for an understanding of what happens when people die and “where” the dead reside. In an often absorbing yet also self-absorbed narrative, Smith looks back on meetings with mediums, an astrologist and a past-life regression therapist. In addition, she recounts experiences with shamanism, meditation and séances. The most fascinating sections of the narrative chronicle her many encounters with mediums, as Smith seems to find a connection to lost relatives and yet cannot get past her pervasive skepticism. Oddly enough, in attempting to handle her grief, the author largely discounts out of hand any traditional religious avenue (though she did meet with a rabbi), preferring instead to stick firmly to the New-Age road. Death even permeates Smith’s relationships with her daughters, as she worries about the (albeit unlikely) possibility of leaving them alone and motherless at an early age. Each chapter ends with a letter written to her daughters for them to read once she is gone. In the end, Smith’s consolation comes in a realization that we are all part of a greater universe and that our physical deaths are more a change than an end or a beginning. In the meantime, we can only “do the best we can until we get to the other side, whatever that looks like.”
A touch morbid and obsessive, and in the end, probably not all that helpful to those struggling with grief.Pub Date: April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59463-306-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hudson Street/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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