In sometimes moving prose, Shawn reveals the psychological damage of having and losing a twin.
Deeply personal memoir that also examines the mystery of autism.
Composer and pianist Shawn (Music/Bennington Coll.; Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life, 2007, etc.) explores the impact on his life of having a twin sister, Mary, who was sent away the summer they turned nine and who has been institutionalized ever since. While his previous memoir focused on his phobias, this one reexamines his agoraphobia, speculates on his own autistic proclivities and lays bare family secrets. (The author’s father was the famously phobic editor of the New Yorker, William Shawn, and his brother is the actor and playwright Wallace Shawn.) As Shawn examines the literature on autism and reports on his findings, the narrative also serves as a capsule history of the scientific understanding of autism. When Mary was a child, Bruno Bettelheim’s “refrigerator mother” theory of autism was still respected; today, scientists recognize the complexity and range of the autistic spectrum. The most fascinating sections of the book, however, are the personal passages about Shawn’s parents’ lives, his teen years and his discovery of music. “Mary’s absence had been left largely undiscussed and papered over in our family life,” he writes. “Something essential in me had been papered over too, and music was my one means of access to it” In a striking image, the author compares himself and Mary to binary stars, “orbiting individually but subject to each other’s gravitational pull.” Although he frequently describes Mary’s appearance, actions and speech, it is not until the penultimate chapter—in which he details a day-long visit with her at the institution in Delaware where she has spent her adult years—that Mary comes to life for the reader. However, understanding how her mind works, what she perceives about her world and what she is feeling are tasks that even her twin brother cannot accomplish.
In sometimes moving prose, Shawn reveals the psychological damage of having and losing a twin.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02237-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
When Kaysen was 18, in 1967, she was admitted to McLean Psychiatric Hospital outside Boston, where she would spend the next 18 months. Now, 25 years and two novels (Far Afield, 1990; Asa, As I Knew Him, 1987) later, she has come to terms with the experience- -as detailed in this searing account. First there was the suicide attempt, a halfhearted one because Kaysen made a phone call before popping the 50 aspirin, leaving enough time to pump out her stomach. The next year it was McLean, which she entered after one session with a bullying doctor, a total stranger. Still, she signed herself in: ``Reality was getting too dense...all my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.'' In the series of snapshots that follows, Kaysen writes as lucidly about the dark jumble inside her head as she does about the hospital routines, the staff, the patients. Her stay didn't coincide with those of various celebrities (Ray Charles, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell), but we are not likely to forget Susan, ``thin and yellow,'' who wrapped everything in sight in toilet paper, or Daisy, whose passions were laxatives and chicken. The staff is equally memorable: ``Our keepers. As for finders—well, we had to be our own finders.'' There was no way the therapists—those dispensers of dope (Thorazine, Stelazine, Mellaril, Librium, Valium)—might improve the patients' conditions: Recovery was in the lap of the gods (``I got better and Daisy didn't and I can't explain why''). When, all these years later, Kaysen reads her diagnosis (``Borderline Personality''), it means nothing when set alongside her descriptions of the ``parallel universe'' of the insane. It's an easy universe to enter, she assures us. We believe her. Every word counts in this brave, funny, moving reconstruction. For Kaysen, writing well has been the best revenge.
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-42366-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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