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WIDOW'S WALK

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

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BRAVE ENOUGH

These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.

A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.

What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.

These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-101-946909

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015

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MASTERY

Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...

Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.

The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.

Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.

Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012

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