A powerful, quietly moving memoir of abuse that encapsulates one woman’s incredible resilience.
Odell discusses the sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of her childhood riding instructor in this memoir.
After a second round of couples therapy with her husband, the author realized that many of the problems she’d experienced stemmed from her failure to thoroughly confront her past—specifically the sexual abuse she suffered from Clarentine, a riding instructor at the Ivy Creek Stables where Odell began riding at age 10. She recalls Clarentine making sexual jokes that she didn’t understand, both to and about her, almost immediately after she arrived: “Needing to pretend to be sexually savvy while protecting myself against my own vulnerability became a coping tactic. Strategies like this started impinging on my nervous system. The grooming process had officially begun.” Odell also recalls Clarentine’s callous physical abuse of the horses in order to “break” them (including a brutal scene of castration), as well as his attempt to bribe Odell into having sex at age 15 with the promise of being able to ride her favorite horse at all of the shows that summer. (Clarentine’s inappropriate behavior with all of his riding students remained an open secret among the girls.) The author, now a therapist herself, maintains a calm tone throughout the memoir in spite of the deeply upsetting events she describes. Her desire to please Clarentine even after she moved away to college—going so far as to visit him in prison after he murdered the father of one of his students—may be difficult for some readers to understand, but Odell articulately explains the emotional hooks that he placed in her (and so many others). The author also effectively ties in her current problems, especially those in her marriage, with her past traumas. Odell’s emotional breakthrough at the memoir’s conclusion will likely prove truly inspirational to readers, whether or not they have personally experienced similar trauma.
A powerful, quietly moving memoir of abuse that encapsulates one woman’s incredible resilience.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781647428723
Page Count: 200
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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