A fresh, intelligent memoir.
A former Live Wire! host’s account of the year she spent facing the “sometimes crippling anxiety” that ruled her life.
Hameister had always been a “toe-dipper. A cringe-r. A wait-and-see-er.” Yet few people knew, just as they did not know that she struggled with generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. After suffering an especially massive anxiety attack in the spring of 2013, the author not only stepped down from her position at Live Wire!; she also decided to “do things that scared me and then write about them.” She began by facing her fear of enclosed spaces and the darkness by going into a sensory deprivation tank. Her success inspired her to push forward into another realm that was especially terrifying to her: dating. The 40-something Hameister, who had struggled with weight issues for most of her life, had only had relationships with two people, both of whom she met through friends. The author was able to find dates online, but her ever present neurosis led her to create a spreadsheet (that she later dispensed with) to help sort through and rank all her options. After enduring the agony of a Brazilian wax to boost her body confidence, she had encounters with an array of men, including a polyamorous “ethical slut” and a bald jazz DJ most memorable for his ability to see past Hameister’s uncontrollable nervous sweating. Her other “firsts” included a pot-smoking session that ended in hospitalization, a deeper plunge into the world of polyamory, a visit to a swinger’s club, an hour with a professional cuddler, and a class in oral sex. Her edgy adventures unexpectedly led to a relationship with a quiet father of two teenage children who gave her the acceptance she thought she would never find. The author not only chronicles how she faced her inner demons and won; she also offers a reminder that doing even the smallest thing to conquer fear “is enough to change a lot.”
A fresh, intelligent memoir.Pub Date: July 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39570-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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
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
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