A raw outpouring of grief and guilt from a mother who lost her son. Twenty-seven-year-old Neddy Davis died of an undiagnosed heart infection in June 1990. This book is taken from the journal his mother kept during the first year after her loss. Divorced, with her daughter living a continent away in California and her longtime lover moving out, Davis wrote daily entries to sort out her feelings. Angry at God, angry at her son, angry at the doctors, she was also filled with guilt and shame at Neddy's charge that her smoking and drinking during pregnancy (she is a recovering alcoholic) had been to blame for his heart condition. ``Slowing down and feeling the pain was the most important lesson I learned about grieving,'' she writes. Meditation meetings, an association for bereaved parents called Compassionate Friends, and a support group for alcoholics, in addition to siblings and friends, helped her cope as she spent much of the year retracing Neddy's life. Davis looked at family photographs and drawings, revisited her son's school, interviewed his doctors, even returned to her childhood home. Before Neddy's cremated remains were buried (as he had requested), she moved with them from room to room in her apartment, the home where he grew up, talking to the ashes in the canister, recalling their time together. A successful children's book author and illustrator (Honest Abe, not reviewed), Davis eventually resumed her public activities. Her daughter came East for Christmas, Davis marked Neddy's birthday at dinner with his girlfriend, and she completed a huge, vibrantly colored painting of two rowboats, ``side by side but not touching [like] Neddy and me.'' If, as Davis says, ``letting in the grief helps to dispel it faster,'' then other grieving parents will find in this wrenching account a mirror of their mourning, if not exactly a comfort. (photos and illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: May 30, 1995
ISBN: 1-55611-450-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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