As Hall himself says, “an eye-opening and sobering experience.”
In the authors’ first nonfiction title, the particulars of Munchausen Syndrome—those diagnosed perpetually feign or provoke symptoms of illness for attention—appear not in the jargon of medical textbooks but in the fraught life of one woman.
Through alternating recollections from Avigal, the patient, and Hall, the therapist, the specifics of Avigal’s episodes are brought into disturbing focus. Abused by her father and unprotected by her mother, Avigal suffered repeated traumatic events. Lacking familial refuge, she continued to harm herself until she was eventually placed in a residential school for children dealing with emotional abuse. Even there, though, she couldn’t escape, falling prey to her caregivers. Avigal didn’t meet Hall until well after she had already married, bore children and lost a son to cancer—a loss which prompted her to attempt suicide again and then reevaluate her well-being. Under Hall’s guidance, Avigal underwent a therapeutic regimen that caused both her and Hall to question many aspects of their own lives. The book’s approach is somewhat unseen in the genre of psychological memoirs: Instead of opting for a singular perspective, the combined frankness of Avigal about her tribulations and Hall about his hurdles in combating them offers enlightening changes of perspective and pace. Despite the book’s often stomach-turning content, it ends on a note of well-earned hope, with Avigal working to address the afflictions of her past. Avigal’s honesty is riveting and bracing, as is Hall’s when he candidly writes of the difficulties of treating Avigal. The book carries a dual meaning in its title: firstly, the secrets of the illness itself and, secondly, the mystery of treating an ailment from which many have not recovered. Avigal and Hall’s collaboration offers readers a coherent timeline while still managing to put forth an arrestingly personal account of redemption. Sensitive, nuanced, ethical and creatively wrought—including reproduced emails between patient and therapist about the treatment process—the book is a major step forward in overcoming the formal restraints of psychiatry to secure dignity, optimism and peace for the mentally ill.
As Hall himself says, “an eye-opening and sobering experience.”Pub Date: May 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-1468094800
Page Count: 176
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.
An author’s trip to Venice takes a distinctly Borgesian turn.
In November 2020, soccer club Venizia F.C. offered Nigerian American author Madu a writing residency as part of its plan “to turn the team into a global entity of fashion, culture, and sports.” Flying to Venice for the fellowship, he felt guilty about leaving his immigrant parents, who were shocked to learn upon moving to the U.S. years earlier that their Nigerian teaching certifications were invalid, forcing his father to work as a stocking clerk at Rite Aid to support the family. Madu’s experiences in Venice are incidental to what is primarily a story about his family, especially his strained relationship with his father, who was disappointed with many of his son’s choices. Unfortunately, the author’s seeming disinterest in Venice renders much of the narrative colorless. He says the trip across the Ponte della Libertà bridge was “magical,” but nothing he describes—the “endless water on both sides,” the nearby seagulls—is particularly remarkable. Little in the text conveys a sense of place or the unique character of his surroundings. Madu is at his best when he focuses on family dynamics and his observations that, in the largely deserted city, “I was one of the few Black people around.” He cites Borges, giving special note to the author’s “The House of Asterion,” in which the minotaur “explains his situation as a creature and as a creature within the labyrinth” of multiple mirrors. This notion leads to the Borgesian turn in the book’s second half, when, in an extended sequence, Madu imagines himself transformed into a minotaur, with “the head of a bull” and his body “larger, thicker, powerful but also cumbersome.” It’s an engaging passage, although stylistically out of keeping with much of what has come before.
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781953368669
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
An engaging childhood memoir and a deeply affectionate tribute to the author’s parents.
The bestselling author recalls her childhood and her family’s wartime experiences.
Readers of Winspear’s popular Maisie Dobbs mystery series appreciate the London investigator’s canny resourcefulness and underlying humanity as she solves her many cases. Yet Dobbs had to overcome plenty of hardships in her ascent from her working-class roots. Part of the appeal of Winspear’s Dobbs series are the descriptions of London and the English countryside, featuring vividly drawn particulars that feel like they were written with firsthand knowledge of that era. In her first book of nonfiction, the author sheds light on the inspiration for Dobbs and her stories as she reflects on her upbringing during the 1950s and ’60s. She focuses much attention on her parents’ lives and their struggles supporting a family, as they chose to live far removed from their London pasts. “My parents left the bombsites and memories of wartime London for an openness they found in the country and on the land,” writes Winspear. As she recounts, each of her parents often had to work multiple jobs, which inspired the author’s own initiative, a trait she would apply to the Dobbs character. Her parents recalled grueling wartime experiences as well as stories of the severe battlefield injuries that left her grandfather shell-shocked. “My mother’s history,” she writes, “became my history—probably because I was young when she began telling me….Looking back, her stories—of war, of abuse at the hands of the people to whom she and her sisters had been billeted when evacuated from London, of seeing the dead following a bombing—were probably too graphic for a child. But I liked listening to them.” Winspear also draws distinctive portraits of postwar England, altogether different from the U.S., where she has since settled, and her unsettling struggles within the rigid British class system.
An engaging childhood memoir and a deeply affectionate tribute to the author’s parents.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64129-269-6
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2024 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
