A typical memoir of personal healing that addresses an atypical kind of trauma.
A reflective account of finding purpose in pain and recovering from a special kind of heartache.
In this debut memoir, Miller begins her story four years after the traumatic experience of losing her only son after a very tiring legal custody battle. She says that she was forced to rediscover her identity and begin her life anew, so she underwent a variety of therapies as she worked to overcome feelings of loss, guilt, and fear. Despite its subtitle, the book covers the topic of equine therapy in just a few pages; in this section, Miller details a few therapeutic experiences she had with horses, as well as general lessons of inspiration she gleaned from their loving natures and simple lifestyles. The remainder of the book discusses her other methods of healing, such as reading and viewing inspiring books and films, reaching out to her son via her blog, traveling to New Mexico for a personal retreat and support group, and participating in yoga. She also says that she listened to the spirit within her that told her to never give up, as well as to what she interpreted as “messages, dreams, and whispers of thoughts” from her son. Miller’s tone throughout this memoir is sincere, and the text flows easily as she coherently expresses her ideas. The uniqueness of her ordeal of “parental alienation” gives this book a slight edge over other personal-healing memoirs, although avid readers of the genre may find little that’s new or different here. Also, Miller doesn’t provide many concrete details about the custody battle itself; although they might have been difficult to include, due to their personal nature, they might have shed significant light on her situation, built trust with readers, and added depth and clarity to her accounts of healing. That said, this story could inspire other readers to undergo necessary work toward recovery.
A typical memoir of personal healing that addresses an atypical kind of trauma.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5043-6176-7
Page Count: 132
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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