Imparts basic, well-targeted knowledge while not burdening readers with an overwhelming amount of detail.
A financial adviser offers practical advice to baby boomers about leaving a legacy and protecting assets in old age.
Many baby boomers facing the inevitability of aging and death seem to be largely unprepared financially and emotionally. Hazewski, a financial adviser who’s also a boomer, wrote this brief yet authoritative guide “to help you understand the fundamental factors that determine whether you will grow old with dignity or difficulty.” This isn’t a guide to investments or accumulating wealth, though; rather, the author addresses the vexing financial and legal issues that individuals often overlook until it’s too late. On the financial and legal side, Hazewski turns his attention specifically to living wills, advanced directives, last wills and trusts. On the practical side, he also talks about the need for long-term care and the importance of making one’s final wishes known to family. “We should never be afraid to share thoughts about our final arrangements with family,” he says. “As awkward as it may seem, it can be done if addressed openly and without emotion.” The writing is clear and concise, and the book’s structure makes it engaging and easy to read. Each chapter begins with a vignette dramatizing a particular scenario related to certain financial or health issues one faces in old age. Hazewski then offers his personal commentary on every scenario, provides a discussion of the broader topic and closes the chapter with a number of “lessons.” The author assembled the scenarios from his experiences with a number of clients, so the realism of the stories helps make Hazewski’s counsel all the more relevant. At times, it seems the author focuses a bit too much on the requirements for Medicaid, giving the impression that many seniors may eventually run out of the money needed to pay for health expenses. Still, Hazewski covers enough other bases that boomers and their families should benefit from the information he shares.
Imparts basic, well-targeted knowledge while not burdening readers with an overwhelming amount of detail.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4839-7836-9
Page Count: 132
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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