A stirring and relatable portrait of a struggling family.
Walsh recounts her quest for love, acceptance, and family in this memoir.
As a child, the author lost both of her parents; as she got older, her other relatives seemed to pass away in quick succession. Forced to confront such trauma at a young age, Walsh struggled to adjust as best as she could—yet she craved a true family and the unconditional love that comes along with it. In the early 1970s, she married Will Simonson and thought she’d found her true love. The couple quickly built their family, first with two boys, Eric and Kyle, and later a daughter, Kate. It soon became apparent, however, that Walsh and her spouse were not a match made in heaven as, per the author, Will’s drinking habit intensified (along with his lies). Throughout her suffering marriage, Walsh tried to make things work, noting, “It’s nearly impossible to untangle the web created by my need for family and fear of living a lifetime alone.” Unfortunately, in the 1990s, things only worsened: Walsh and her husband divorced and the kids were caught between them. The author describes Will’s unwillingness to discipline and how he used this laissez-faire attitude to gain his children’s favor; Kate, still young, turned against her mother, and a hostile custody battle ensued. Meanwhile, Kyle was not doing well in school, and Eric, who declined to go to college and later enlisted in the Navy, could not seem to make his life work. When Eric died and Walsh found herself, once again, facing an onslaught of grief, she and her family tried to pick up the pieces. In this memoir, the author is unflinchingly honest and vulnerable, examining her deep well of trauma-induced loneliness and her desperate love for her children. She devotes equal time to her struggles (like Eric facing a sexual assault charge) and to her successes (such as her new career as a speech pathologist). Walsh’s prose is accessible and heartfelt, and she lays her grief and adversity all out on the table for readers while maintaining as optimistic an outlook as possible.
A stirring and relatable portrait of a struggling family.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9798887840413
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Motina Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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