The younger sister of a woman with lifelong disabling mental illness describes her struggles to oversee her sister's care after their mother's death, and to acknowledge the deeply pervasive effects of the illness on her own self-image and outlook. Sally Moorman's manic-depressive emotional disorder first required hospitalization when she was 18 and her sister Peggy, the author, was ten. Over the years that followed, Peggy tried a few strategies to cope with Sally's problems: denying her sister's existence; trying to become perfect in order to banish suspicion in others (and in herself) that she herself might be mentally unstable; and, finally, fleeing from the family home in Virginia to live and work in New York. Meanwhile, the sisters' widowed mother made Sally's care her life's purpose, and it took all she could give, and more. Peggy dreaded what would happen when their mother died, and she helped her mother set up a trust fund for Sally's future needs. When Sally was 47 and Peggy 39, their mother did die; the nightmarish year that followed realized all of Peggy's worst fears as she was forced to shuttle back and forth to Virginia to ensure that Sally did not self-destruct. The trust-fund money allowed Peggy to hire a private social worker and the services of an agency of advocates for the mentally ill; this helped—but not enough to keep Peggy from being driven to exhaustion and despair. Finally, Peggy found a self-help group for siblings of the mentally ill, and they and Peggy's therapist helped her to begin to get on with her own life. The memoir ends on a happy, cautiously hopeful note, with Sally stabilized and Peggy married and a mother. Moorman tells her family's story with courage, honesty, and generosity. Those close to people with mental illness should find insight and gentle guidance here.
Pub Date: April 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-393-02987-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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