Often meandering but emotionally rich nonetheless.
In this debut memoir, a husband and wife explore the unexpected spiritual opportunities that follow a terminal cancer diagnosis.
In the time between co-author Ken Jones’ June 2009 melanoma diagnosis and his death nine months later, he and his wife, co-author Carol Jones, devoted themselves anew to spiritual study. Following the tenets of the Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, the couple sought to use Ken’s illness to enrich their own relationship and better understand their places within the divine scheme of things. This book is the story of that process told through a diverse compilation of texts, including Ken’s post-diagnosis blog posts, Carol’s personal reflections, assorted MSIA prayers, and missives from the couple’s friends, family, and advisers. A few sections even feature messages from Ken that Carol claims to have received via automatic writing. Carol and Ken’s religious community and beliefs form the narrative’s backbone, which may be confusing to readers unfamiliar with MSIA. References to “the Light of Christ” and “the Mystical Traveler” come early and often, accompanied by little context for the uninitiated. Much of the couple’s story, however, proves relatable even to those who don’t share their spiritual perspective. Ken’s descriptions of finding joy in the mundane as his physical condition worsens may comfort and inspire those facing losses of their own, while Carol’s examination of their imperfect marriage and fraught road to compassionate love lend the story a grounded humanity. These strengths are diminished, however, by an overall lack of narrative focus. Many chapters contain superfluous personal details, reprinted blog comments, or hints at inside jokes that will mean little to anyone who did not know Ken personally. Carol also tends to make similar points multiple times with only slight variations in language; at times, the book reads more like an unedited journal than a structured story. Still, Carol and Ken’s unflinching look at the often sanitized subject of death is refreshing, and interested readers will gain a deeper understanding of what Carol calls “the real treasure of consciously leaving this world.”
Often meandering but emotionally rich nonetheless.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1452522777
Page Count: 362
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2026 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.
