A worthy addition to the literature of addiction and recovery, charming and harrowing by turns.
The author of the world’s most famous memoir returns to the form to tell the story of a great love.
“This book—its stories, prayers, poems, journal entries, photos, and drawings—is my very best effort to tell the truth about what happened between me and Rayya Elias—our friendship, our romance, our beauty, rage, and pain. It tells the story of Rayya’s addiction, her relapse, and her death. It also tells the story of my own addiction and my eventual surrender into recovery.” Gilbert (Eat Pray Love, City of Girls, etc.) brings her beloved Rayya vibrantly to life on the page, showing how and why the woman she met in 2002 as a hairdresser in the East Village was “a legend to all who knew her.” When Rayya was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2016, Gilbert ended her marriage (which by then had become a distant second fiddle to the relationship with Rayya), and the two became lovers. There was a good part, and then a very bad part in the months leading up to Rayya’s death in 2018. The book also follows the story of Gilbert’s subsequent recovery from sex and love addiction through devoted adherence to a 12-step program. Since she does not “have the heart to write out the excruciating details of the binge that I went on” after Rayya died, citing concern for the privacy of others, she focuses instead on the spiritual and emotional progress she has finally been able to achieve, documented in earnest poems and winsome doodles as well as well-written anecdotes. “Readers of my earlier work may remember that I reached nearly this same level of peace and tranquility back when I was in India, in the middle of my Eat Pray Love travels, after months of disciplined prayer, meditation, and retreat.” The difference this time, she says, is that she has the support she needs not to “drive my life off a cliff all over again.”
A worthy addition to the literature of addiction and recovery, charming and harrowing by turns.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780593540985
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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