A moving celebration of life before death, balanced between plangent reflection and exuberant affirmation.
Along with the physical decline of old age comes self-understanding, a reordering of priorities, and gratitude for the small pleasures of life, argues this luminous meditation.
Kapur, a 77-year-old Indian-American playwright and poet, mordantly catalogues the difficulties of age, such as an initial sense of uselessness after retirement, lack of energy, aches and pains, and the increasing awareness of death as she and her husband, Payson Stevens, struggle with cancer. Yet she finds consolations, like a new capacity to adapt and pace her energies, a shedding of obsessions with appearance, the blessings of “Mother cannabis, the green goddess [she] eat[s],” who “whisks away [her] depression and malaise,” and an ability to live contentedly in the moment while doing nothing in particular. Kapur’s autobiographical recollections explore themes of love and loss—they include grief-stricken homages to her deceased parents and dying sister, and a harrowing account of the suicide of her previous husband, Donald Powell, who, in the throes of depression, shot himself after a marital squabble. The book is also replete with scenes from her complicated relationship with Payson, some testy (“I lost it and called him an asshole, twice, even though the first time he went ballistic when I used the word”) and others affectionate (“I lean on him in my feebleness and he is present most of the time, regales me with the piano when he is in the mood, heats water in the kettle and fills my hot water bottles”). Kapur’s writing is clear-eyed, evocative, and wryly humorous in its kvetching portrait of advanced age, of “feeling tired, depressed, old, my stomach distended with trapped, ballooning gas like a dirigible, my right knee creaking, a heavy-duty brace on my left wrist from severe tenosynovitis”; but she also offers lyrical paeans to what remains: “I move my finger on the keyboard and am grateful I can move my finger; I see and feel the rays of the sun hitting my face and give thanks.” Readers will find much hard-won wisdom here.
A moving celebration of life before death, balanced between plangent reflection and exuberant affirmation.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798888500521
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Park Street Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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