Carefully crafted, haunting, and absorbing, this thrilling memoir echoes in the head and heart long after the final page.
When a troubled young musician disappears, her sister searches for something more profound than answers.
In her debut memoir, poet and educator Bonner reflects not only on her sister Nancy’s (she renamed herself Atlantis Black) disappearance, but also on the shadows that have haunted her family. What begins with a resume of the sisters’ youth transforms into a psycho-thriller murder mystery with a charmingly unreliable narrator. The author lays the blame for her sister’s mental illness, the root of her demise, unambiguously on their father’s abuse, their mother’s manic depression, and the sexual entitlement of the boys at school. Wrought in unsentimental, candid prose, the depictions of their childhood showcase Bonner’s poetic sensibilities, as she displays powerful control over imagery, suspense, and irony. As the girls matured, the author achieved a high level of education, professional success, and some stable relationships. Meanwhile, Atlantis revealed only glimpses of her precarious existence to her sister. Shady characters, illegal activity, drug abuse, and financial desperation pepper their correspondence, which Bonner intersperses through the primary narrative. Atlantis’ voice, rich with suffering and paranoia and tender with love and vulnerability, lives on through this dramatic memoir. The author clearly tried to strike a delicate balance between helping without derailing her own life, being supportive without enabling, and living fully without abandoning a needy loved one. The secrets of Atlantis’ life eventually became a chasm in which Bonner began to lose her stable sense of reality. By the end, the lucky sister has begun to embody some of her female relatives’ instability, and she constantly questions herself. She believes, at least partially, the official story of Atlantis’ drug-related death in Tijuana, and while she does want to know what happened, she’d prefer to know why and how it could have gone differently.
Carefully crafted, haunting, and absorbing, this thrilling memoir echoes in the head and heart long after the final page.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947793-77-4
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dillard’s story reflects maturity and understanding from someone who was forced to mature and understand too much too soon.
A measured memoir from a daughter of the famous family.
Growing up in the Institute of Basic Life Principles community, which she came to realize was “a cult, thriving on a culture of fear and manipulation,” Duggar and her 18 siblings were raised never to question parental authority. As the author recalls, she felt no need to, describing the loving home of her girlhood. When a documentary crew approached her father, Jim Bob, and proposed first a series of TV specials that would be called 17 Kids and Counting (later 18 and 19 Kids and Counting), he agreed, telling his family that this was a chance to share their conservative Christian faith. It was also a chance to become wealthy, but Jill, who was dedicated to following the rules, didn’t question where the money went. A key to her falling out with her family was orchestrated by Jim Bob, who introduced her to missionary Derick Dillard. Their wedding was one of the most-watched episodes of the series. Even though she was an adult, Jill’s parents and the show continued to expect more of the young couple. When they attempted to say no to filming some aspects of their lives, Jill discovered that a sheet of paper her father asked her to sign the day before her wedding was part of a contract in which she had unwittingly agreed to full cooperation. Writing about her sex offender brother, Josh, and the legal action she and Derick had to take to get their questions answered, Jill describes how she was finally able—through therapy, prayer, and the establishment of boundaries—to reconcile love for her parents with Jim Bob’s deception and reframe her faith outside the IBLP.
Dillard’s story reflects maturity and understanding from someone who was forced to mature and understand too much too soon.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781668024447
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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