The “shock of the new” is evident everywhere in this revealing, accessible, and luscious memoir.
With gusto, an exuberant architect considers his life and work.
Libeskind (Daniel Libeskind: Inspiration and Process in Architecture, 2015, etc.) describes his book as “esoteric concepts” transformed into a “visual feast.” In a reprinted page from Horace’s Art of Poetry, these lines jump out: “Such is the book, that like a sick man’s dreams, / Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.” It’s an apt description of this book, a lavish array of texts, full-page callouts in large, boldface type, pages of various colors, and sumptuous photographs of the author’s buildings, extreme in their curved and winding shapes and sizes, with massive, metallic edges and intersecting diagonal slashes. Born in Poland in 1946 (his parents were Holocaust survivors), Libeskind’s two early obsessions were the accordion and drawing. The family moved to the Bronx in 1959, and the author studied architecture at Cooper Union. He tells us he was a rebel: “I always try to depart from what has come before.” He was in his 50s before his first building was completed, the Felix Nussbaum Haus. Throughout, he discusses lifelong sources of inspiration: W.B. Yeats, The Little Prince, Michelangelo, James Joyce, Emily Dickinson, and music. Architecture, he writes, is “actually similar to a symphony, which, at its conception, is nothing more than code on paper.” Reassembling the pieces of a broken English teapot inspired his Imperial War Museum in Manchester, England. Libeskind invites us to take a visual and textual tour of some of his most important structures, including Milan’s CityLife, Singapore’s Reflections and Corals at Keppel Bay, Dublin’s Grand Canal Theatre, and the highly challenging and complex World Trade Center Master Plan. He also includes some of his city sculptures and furniture products such as chairs, a chess set, and a chandelier. Quoting Le Corbusier, his advice to young architects is simple: “travel” and “read books.”
The “shock of the new” is evident everywhere in this revealing, accessible, and luscious memoir.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-49735-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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
A vibrant, encouraging depiction of a sinister disorder.
A British novelist turns to autobiography to report the manifold symptoms and management of his debilitating disease, depression.
Clever author Haig (The Humans, 2013, etc.) writes brief, episodic vignettes, not of a tranquil life but of an existence of unbearable, unsustainable melancholy. Throughout his story, presented in bits frequently less than a page long (e.g., “Things you think during your 1,000th panic attack”), the author considers phases he describes in turn as Falling, Landing, Rising, Living, and, finally, simply Being with spells of depression. Haig lists markers of his unseen disease, including adolescent angst, pain, continual dread, inability to speak, hypochondria, and insomnia. He describes his frequent panic attacks and near-constant anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. Haig also assesses the efficacy of neuroscience, yoga, St. John’s wort, exercise, pharmaceuticals, silence, talking, walking, running, staying put, and working up the courage to do even the most seemingly mundane of tasks, like visiting the village store. Best for the author were reading, writing, and the frequent dispensing of kindnesses and love. He acknowledges particularly his debt to his then-girlfriend, now-wife. After nearly 15 years, Haig is doing better. He appreciates being alive and savors the miracle of existence. His writing is infectious though sometimes facile—and grammarians may be upset with the writer’s occasional confusion of the nominative and objective cases of personal pronouns. Less tidy and more eclectic than William Styron’s equally brief, iconic Darkness Visible, Haig’s book provides unobjectionable advice that will offer some help and succor to those who experience depression and other related illnesses. For families and friends of the afflicted, Haig’s book, like Styron’s, will provide understanding and support.
A vibrant, encouraging depiction of a sinister disorder.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-312872-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
SEEN & HEARD
Readers Donate Depression Book After Star Suicide
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