An economically written testimony that will appeal to Christians seeking to reconcile their faith with loss.
A Christian testimony about a family that faced years of medical challenges.
Born in the late 1960s in rural Kentucky, debut author Lawson grew up watching her parents’ strong work ethic as they operated a local funeral home and ambulance service. She was raised a Christian, but she writes that she was often “not too far from God, but not especially close either….my walk was more in line with other things, like food and books.” After overcoming a lifelong struggle with her weight and self-esteem issues, and surviving a short-lived marriage, Lawson believed that she was finally on track in her life—and then her mother was diagnosed with renal failure. She returned home to help her mom, whom she describes as “ever the ‘steel magnolia.’ ” But after years of daily dialysis, the doctors insisted that a kidney transplant was the only way forward. Lawson was discovered to be a match, and she gave everything she could to try and save the life of the woman who’d done so much for her, but it turned out to be only the beginning of numerous complications. Other family tragedies followed, and Lawson underwent her own struggle with infertility. The crux of her story is her second marriage to a supportive, loving man and her eventual acceptance and understanding of why God would allow such difficulties to befall her family. With her husband’s encouragement, she decided to share her testimony and the story of her resilient faith. Lawson’s concise prose condenses years of her life into a neat, compact narrative that still has room for big, emotional moments. Although she summarizes most events in a few sentences, she also takes care to elaborate painful ones, including her many prayers and her mother’s heartbreaking final gestures, which makes each complication feel more urgent and powerful. Overall, the book follows a familiar narrative for religious memoirs and testimonials, and there are no groundbreaking insights into pain, loss, or the reluctant acceptance of God’s plan. However, Christian readers will appreciate her brevity in sharing her spiritual struggle and eventual revelations.
An economically written testimony that will appeal to Christians seeking to reconcile their faith with loss.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-0244-6
Page Count: 76
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
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