Honest, unsparing, ultimately uplifting account of magazine- writer Hosansky's passage from devastating grief to a fulfilling life alone. ``I was of the generation that went from parents to husband,'' the author says, and so the death of her mate of 39 years, travel- magazine editor Mel Hosansky, is doubly traumatic. Not only does she lose a beloved companion but she's forced into an independence that nothing in her experience has prepared her for. In his last days, wasted by cancer and weary of the struggle, Mel confides to his brother that he would like to ``drift off into nothingness. But I feel that I have to be responsible for Anne.'' The author, overhearing him, is enraged, partly because she fears the truth of his words: Mel's concern for her may well be prolonging his hopeless, agonizing existence. After Mel's death, Hosansky copes with the dread of coming home alone; crazy moments of being blindsided by reminders of her loss; bitter disillusionment as friends and relatives pull away from her; paralyzing indecision about details of Mel's funeral and burial; and a sense of incompleteness now that she's no longer part of a couple. She joins a support group, reaches out to friends, gradually begins to attempt tasks that Mel used to take care of, and, tentatively, even considers romance (in an endearing scene, this 60-ish woman steels herself to buy condoms for a date with a widower from her support group—neither of them, it turns out, is up to using them). Hosansky's greatest victory is when she takes—alone—the trip to Italy that she had meant to take with Mel. Slow deaths from cancer, insensitive doctors, and surviving wives left with lives in ruins have become, sadly, all too familiar in recent nonfiction. But Hosansky's chronicle stands out by virtue of the author's candor about her fears and frailties, as well as of her bravery in growing to meet the challenges of her new life.
Pub Date: Jan. 24, 1994
ISBN: 1-55611-381-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1993
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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