Eye-opening and entertainingly voyeuristic, this impressionistic taste test illustrates the struggles more than the benefits...
An Australian travel writer’s exuberant sampling of wellness methods.
After years of drinking, smoking, and carefree eating, Guardian senior writer Delaney (This Restless Life: Churning Through Love, Work, and Travel, 2009, etc.) sought to “reset my body and my life.” Enticed by a magazine assignment, the author left Brooklyn for her native Australia to embark on a controversial, promise-laden 101-day fasting program and evaluate its effectiveness. Though the program’s core clinician diagnosed her as “highly toxic,” the author began the hardcore regimen with a mixture of enthusiasm, hopefulness, and skepticism. Though she didn’t finish successfully, the process itself was by turns fascinating, grueling, and tedious. Her body revolted, her mind raced, and her breath became repulsive; she also suffered two bouts of frightening chest pain. Delaney expanded her wellness survey to include the extreme, sweat-dripping physical demands of Bikram yoga. She also opines on the addictive nature of the multibillion-dollar wellness industry and how it has replaced religion for some, and she evaluates its place in society as a commodity. She effectively explores the nuances of the “so-called healing crisis paradox” and, through her own anecdotes and experiences, probes how and why people feel the need to detoxify their bodies (and minds) and emerge “clean” from impurities. In the final section, Delaney delves into the art of coffee colonics, meditation, and the mindful serenity craze, chronicling her time at a silent retreat. While the author reached no profound epiphany, she admits that “the road to wellness has been my own personal stations of the cross,” achieved with mixed results. Throughout the narrative, Delaney proves to be a witty tour guide across the wellness wonderland, and the book will certainly appeal to readers curious to dip their feet in.
Eye-opening and entertainingly voyeuristic, this impressionistic taste test illustrates the struggles more than the benefits of detoxification techniques.Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77164-370-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Greystone Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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