Arthur presents an extensive compendium of advice and information that can be utilized by readers seeking to change their lives for the better.
While Arthur’s work seeks to be a book about crisis management, promising to help “a person in a crisis situation to become stable, healthy and joyful,” it is so exhaustingly thorough in defining and addressing the myriad of crises one might encounter—from miscarriage to torture—as well as the many possible ways one’s life might be improved—from finding the right job to getting a good night’s sleep—that it’s unlikely to be of much value to a reader truly in crisis. A rape victim, for instance, would be better served by a book about rape than one that also includes extensive, if accurate, information about self-mutilation and mental illness. This book could, however, prove quite valuable to its other intended audience, “those that are in their comfort zones and have decided it is time to make some positive changes in their lives.” The material, on a vast range of topics, from time management to meditation, financial health to food safety, as well as snoring, addiction, humor, brain development and countless others, is well organized and lucid, if frequently un-sourced. Advice like “[w]henever you seek something better in your life, you may have to let something else go in order to get it” doesn’t need to be referenced. But the claim that “orange improves social behavior” surely should be, but is not. Nor is the reader provided with any biographical information about the author, such as what his credentials are or how he came to write this book. While there is little that is new in these pages, and it’s too broad and encyclopedic to serve a reader in the midst of coping with a real crisis, there’s enough useful information and sound advice here to make it a good choice for the reader who wants to work toward a life that is more “stable, healthy and joyful.” Though much sifting may be required, Arthur’s book is a valuable resource for those looking to better themselves.
Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2010
ISBN: 978-0979335716
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Balance Integration Group
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
