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THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY

Criminal allegations against her husband test a woman’s faith and a family’s fortitude, as recounted in this debut memoir.
In August 2009, Brown-Jack’s youngest daughter phoned with “unbelievable news” about her father (unnamed in the book): “a shameful allegation…that didn’t fit his character.” Brown-Jack’s husband was soon arrested on an aggravated felony charge; readers never learn the exact nature of the alleged crime. Through 2013, the author struggled with worries, many of them financial. Bail bonding was expensive; the family’s financial statements disqualified them from a court-appointed attorney, but without savings, they couldn’t afford much. The family car was repossessed. Friends had to help with groceries. Another source of turmoil was the long delay in trying the case. It was dismissed, then refiled; the first trial ended in a hung jury; the prosecution seemed willing to delay endlessly when Brown-Jack’s husband refused to take a plea bargain; the family went through five lawyers. A deeply religious woman, Brown-Jack saw the experience as a test of her faith, ending her book on a grateful note. The difficulty for readers, however, is that the “other side” of the story has little impact when the story itself is a mystery. The author is cagey about embarrassing details, understandable in real life but frustrating in a memoir. Her husband remains a blank page, readers learning little about him except that he had a military career. Another unanswered question is why Brown-Jack, a law enforcement officer with friends and relatives who are attorneys, sees herself as a naïve outsider to legal proceedings: “the day we went to court…was my first experience with the justice system at that level”; “We did not trust the criminal justice system.” Brown-Jack does convincingly demonstrate the wrenching, time-consuming, expensive tangle posed by legal difficulties. But while she intends to promote trust in God, she continually suggests that bad things happen only to those who deserve it through lack of faith: “because of…my faithfulness, God didn’t bring my family to open shame.” Some readers may find this an unkind presumption.
Heartfelt but opaque.

Pub Date: April 9, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4582-1881-0

Page Count: 150

Publisher: AbbottPress

Review Posted Online: July 2, 2015

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955

ISBN: 0679733736

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955

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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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