An often engaging memoir that will be a valuable contribution to any self-help library.
Gell’s debut memoir recounts her experiences during her infant granddaughter’s brain cancer treatments.
When the author got the call from her daughter Ros, that Claire, the author’s 5-month-old granddaughter, had been diagnosed with brain cancer, she felt at a loss at how to support them. In this book, the author, a marriage and family psychotherapist, blends a step-by-step account of Claire’s medical treatments and its effects on the family with “some of the many things I learned about myself and life in the process.” While in the pediatric intensive care unit with Claire, Ros asked, “What do I do Mom?,” to which Gell answered, “You feel what you’re feeling, and you make the best decisions that you can for her sake.” At first, the author castigated herself, thinking this answer to be another way of saying, “I have no idea.” Upon reflection, however, she began to see it as helpful, because “The real challenge is to find a way to stay present as much as we can. This is how we avoid drowning in the situation.” Raised as a Presbyterian by parents whose answer to any crisis was to “soldier on,” Gell found her own ways to handle life’s crises, turning to qi gong, acupuncture, and reiki alternative-healing approaches when faced with health challenges. Young Claire underwent chemotherapy and multiple surgeries, and throughout the ordeal, the author shows how she confronted her own visceral emotional responses (“How could this be happening to us?”) with pragmatic problem-solving techniques. Overall, Gell provides a heart-wrenching account that not only draws on her personal, emotional experience, but also her professional work as a therapist. For example, she offers readers a 10-point list of ways to “stay present” when faced with a long-term medical crisis. For the most part, the first-person narrative is engaging and its urgency drives the story forward. However, as the book goes on, readers may find themselves skimming over some of the flashbacks that deal with childhood fears and psychological issues.
An often engaging memoir that will be a valuable contribution to any self-help library.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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