A sprightly and warmly encouraging self-help manual.
Berry offers a workbook for improving one’s life from the inside out.
At one point in this self-help work, the author recounts the story of a time when she was arduously hiking with a bruised foot, carrying a backpack that felt heavier with each step. She vividly recalls the flood of relief she felt when she reached camp and was able to set her burden down: “In our own lives, how much of what we are dragging around is not ours?” she asks. “How much of it is ready to be released? How much lighter would we feel when we’ve let it go?” It’s not a perfect analogy—in reality, no matter how uncomfortable, it could be a mistake to discard one’s supplies mid-hike. However, it clearly signals the overriding tone of Berry’s book, in which she consistently reminds her readers that they’re more in control of their destinies than they might think. The world is inherently uncertain, but crucial inner choices remain in one’s own hands, she asserts. “When you decide you can be happy no matter what, your whole life will shift,” she writes. “You begin to choose how you react to outside influences instead of giving them the power to upset you.” This may initially strike many readers as counterintuitive, but she ably clarifies this stance by starting her book with questions and an assessment to help nail down the reader’s “starting point” regarding their confidence and the sustainability of their lifestyle. She then fills her chapters with bullet points, checklists, and written exercises. In an early chapter straightforwardly titled “Dump the Garbage,” for instance, she asks readers to “List three stuck emotions you feel you are carrying that you're willing to let go of”; later chapters focus in detail on developing and strengthening one’s resilience and preparedness for obstacles that one may need to overcome. Overall, Berry is an exuberantly upbeat narrator, and she writes directly and energetically about the “ebullient trilling of the canary” that she asserts that her readers will hear, once they fully realize the power they have over the tenor of their lives.
A sprightly and warmly encouraging self-help manual.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2023
ISBN: 979-8885832298
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Author Academy Elite
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A stiff saga of righteousness overcoming a bad seed.
Skin color fuels sibling rivalries in this family melodrama.
Vernon and Verlene Mays, a multiracial couple in DeKalb, Texas, pass on a rainbow of complexions to their four children. Family discord ensues as their eldest daughter Verna, a light-skinned beauty, conceives an intense loathing for her darker, chubbier sister Viola Grace for no clear reason aside from Viola Grace’s unfashionable looks, studiousness and angelic disposition. Verna’s meanness blossoms in high school; she cuts classes, hangs with bad girls and sighs and rolls her eyes at everything her family does. Sounds pretty typical for a teenager, but Verlene, a woman with strict Christian values, is not one to brook a jot of rebelliousness in a child and packs her daughter off to a church boarding school. Verna runs away, taking with her the story’s sole element of trouble and complexity; with her off the stage for many chapters, the novel becomes a staid chronicle of happiness and achievement. Viola does brilliantly in college and medical school and acquires an upstanding surgeon boyfriend; her brother Vernon, Jr. and sister Vernice are also paragons. Verna-less, the family gathers for joyous yuletide celebrations (primly devoid of the “pagan symbolism” of the Christmas tree) where they toast their successes and give thanks to God before rushing out to buy new Bibles. “ ‘God is good all the time, and everything is just fine,’ ” Viola Grace observes in a fitting summary of most of the narrative. It’s a relief when the prodigal Verna finally resurfaces, beaten unconscious, with years of hard living under her belt; the tearful reunions have hardly subsided when a new rivalry develops over Verna’s neglected children, whom Viola Grace has taken in. Verna is an interesting character—bruised, often nasty, aching over her estrangement from her censorious family. Unfortunately, the author disapproves of her as strongly as the other characters do; the story is so intent on deploring Verna and applauding her perfect siblings that we never learn what makes her tick.
A stiff saga of righteousness overcoming a bad seed.Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4415-8934-7
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A facile New Age story in which the author and his wife are initiated into the cult of angels by a band of women bikers in the Mojave Desert. Coelho (The Alchemist, 1993) tells how, at the bidding of his "Master," a wealthy businessman, he and his wife, Chris, go off into the desert for 40 days to look for his guardian angel. They find their enlightenment first from Gene, a young man who lives in a trailer, and finally from eight women, known as the Valkyries, who roam the desert on motorcycles and whose wild leader, Valhalla, becomes the couple's mystagogue. Coelho's basic message is that Paradise is open and angels are present if only we break the pact of our self-betrayal and learn to conquer fear and the distractions of our "second mind." Unfortunately, he fails to go anywhere with this potentially exciting but hardly original vision. What he offers is a kind of doctrinal salad in which belief in angels, channeling, and casual sex are mixed with references to Magic rites, Catholic worship, and reincarnation. Coelho uses his characters to emphasize the dubious position that spiritual knowledge can be gained without any connection to how one lives. At times his wisdom turns out to be the familiar exhortation to follow our dreams, and he asserts, without clarification, that we are all manifestations of the Absolute. Coelho's ignorance and superficiality are most blatant when he tells us that St. Mary of Egypt was canonized for her promiscuity and is remembered by almost no one today, whereas in fact, she was converted during her famous visit to Jerusalem, spent the rest of her life as a penitent, and is solemnly commemorated every year by the Orthodox Church all over the world. More pap for the spiritually challenged.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-251291-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
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