Hard evidence that “no matter how long it’s gone on, no matter how bad it is,” an addict’s life can move to higher ground.
Transformative experiences that led to sobriety, chronicled by 44 people in the public eye and compiled by one of their own.
Lawford knows a thing or two about alcoholism, heavy drug use and denial, which he disarmingly chronicled in Symptoms of Withdrawal (2005). His “moment of clarity” is not an unfamiliar one: He tanked and was a step from pulling the trigger when he surrendered to honesty and got help. Such revelatory epiphanies are as mysterious as they are sublime, and here they make for good storytelling. (They also serve as good examples, readers will hope; Lawford points out that more than 22 million people in the United States have problems with alcohol or drugs, and fewer than ten percent seek treatment.) Personal testimonies by celebrities ranging from Alec Baldwin to Buzz Aldrin bespeak the many faces that substance abuse can take and the equal variety of the illuminations that point people toward change. Some have a religious tone, some are dramatic, others subdued but deeply felt. A few will leave you wondering, such as Richard Dreyfuss’s recurring vision of a little girl dressed in pink, an image he couldn’t shake even while he was busy with drugs, booze and orgies. More than a few will leave you cringing, like Martin Sheen’s ugly encounter with his son Charlie and his painful realization that Charlie’s subsequent drug problems were partly his responsibility. “I taught him everything he knew,” the recovering alcoholic admits. An angel in the form of a no-bullshit therapist came to folksinger Judy Collins’s rescue; a mirror in his solitary-confinement cell did the same for musician/federal prisoner Dejuan Verrett. Each story holds the individual fascination of its particular circumstances; all of them get their oomph from punchy compression and plainspoken honesty.
Hard evidence that “no matter how long it’s gone on, no matter how bad it is,” an addict’s life can move to higher ground.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-145621-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2008
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
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 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.
