A skillfully told memoir about an arduous weight-loss journey.
Sapiro, in her debut memoir, presents an autobiographical account of her decadeslong struggle with weight loss.
The author’s weight problems began at birth: She arrived premature, a full month earlier than expected, and didn’t gain weight as readily as most newborns. Her grandmother and parents did all they could to fatten her up, which caused her to associate food (and weight gain) with a smiling, encouraging family. By the time she entered second grade, she was far heavier than most girls her age, which opened the door to years of teasing and bullying. Sapiro describes a variety of childhood challenges, from dangerously high blood pressure to dressing-room disappointments. The author’s self-esteem suffered, and she began to eat more for comfort than any other reason. A 23-year-old Sapiro decided to change her life by having gastric bypass surgery, but she received inadequate education and professional guidance afterward, which made it less of a success than she’d hoped it would be. Finally, in middle age, she decided with her husband to improve her health through diet and exercise, and she soon began to notice changes. This account puts a sympathetic face on a condition that’s often demonized in modern society. Sapiro explains the environmental factors that caused her initial weight problems and effectively illustrates how obesity isn’t merely a matter of overeating. She also accepts a portion of the responsibility for her weight difficulties in early adulthood and discusses the stigma of gastric bypass surgery, which some people see as a way to “cheat” on weight loss. As she describes the postoperative work she put into changing her habits, however, she demonstrates that the option was anything but easy. She also helpfully includes sample exercise routines, quick tips and inspirational quotes at the end of the book for readers who might need a push forward.
A skillfully told memoir about an arduous weight-loss journey.Pub Date: July 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490552699
Page Count: 124
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
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
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
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