While it needs streamlining, this moving tribute remains heartfelt and personal.
A writer blends fiction and autobiography to tell the story of his wife’s perseverance.
By the time debut author Markman had met Macy, she had already lived an extraordinary life. After a devastating miscarriage, she stayed with her first husband, Wayne, and eventually gave birth to their son, Gino. With Wayne more preoccupied by his band than his young family, Macy was left to care for the struggling infant. By the time the doctors realized Gino’s constant crying and feeding were abnormal, it was too late. The baby had already suffered a major stroke and an immense spike in his blood sugar, leaving him insulin-dependent and wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life. “But while the doctors kept using the word limitations, Macy heard the word challenges,” the author writes. And she did indeed experience many more challenges. Wayne would grow from negligent to outright abusive as Macy struggled to ensure Gino’s proper feeding and maintain her job in education. Eventually, with the support of her best friend, Jenny, Macy left Wayne and signed up for an online dating website, which allowed Markman to come into her story and begin narrating in the first person her ascent through the politics of the local school district as a principal, reading director, and Ph.D. candidate. The two slowly built a life together revolving around caring for Gino and the author’s own troubled son, Tommy. Markman’s admiration for Macy brightly shines through in every tale he re-creates—from the work’s opening, when she handles the news of 9/11 with utter professionalism and grace, to the moment she learns that she will become a principal 15 minutes before her first day starts. The author crafts a loving, humorous, and relatable character. But the switch from third to first person is somewhat jarring, changing the book from a novel to a memoir a third of the way through. Sticking to one point of view might have helped Markman to edit down the volume’s considerable length (over 450 pages) and focus on its essential theme: Macy’s inspiring tenacity.
While it needs streamlining, this moving tribute remains heartfelt and personal.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-977203-46-5
Page Count: 482
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Though extension is possible, make no mistake about it; this is a ward and not a microcosm.
This is a book which courts the dangers of two extremes.
It can be taken not seriously enough or, more likely, critical climate considered, too seriously. Kesey's first novel is narrated by a half-Indian schizophrenic who has withdrawn completely by feigning deaf-muteness. It is set in a mental ward ruled by Big Nurse—a monumental matriarch who keeps her men in line by some highly original disciplinary measures: Nursey doesn't spank, but oh that electric shock treatment! Into the ward swaggers McMurphy, a lusty gambling man with white whales on his shorts and the psychology of unmarried nurses down to a science. He leads the men on to a series of major victories, including the substitution of recent issues of Nugget and Playboy for some dated McCall's. The fatuity of hospital utilitarianism, that alcohol-swathed brand of idiocy responsible for the custom of waking patients from a deep sleep in order to administer barbiturates, is countered by McMurphy's simple, articulate, logic. This is a thoroughly enthralling, brilliantly tempered novel, peopled by at least two unforgettable characters. (Big Nurse is custom tailored for a busty Eileen Heckert.)
Though extension is possible, make no mistake about it; this is a ward and not a microcosm.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1962
ISBN: 0451163966
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1961
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
APPRECIATIONS
Short, to the point, and absolutely unremarkable: sure to be another medium-hot romance-lite hit for Sparks, who at the very...
A mother unburdens a story of past romance to her troubled daughter for no good reason.
Adrienne Willis is a middle-aged mother with three kids who, not surprisingly, finds herself in an emotional lurch after her husband dumps her for a younger, prettier thing. Needing to recharge her batteries, Adrienne takes a holiday, watching over her friend’s small bed-and-breakfast in the North Carolina beach town of Rodanthe. Then Dr. Paul Flanner appears, himself a cold fish in need of a little warming up. This is the scene laid out by Adrienne to her daughter, Amanda, in a framing device of unusual crudity from Sparks (A Bend in the Road, 2001, etc.). Amanda’s husband has recently died and she hasn’t quite gotten around to figuring out how to keep on living. Imagining that nothing is better for a broken heart than somebody else’s sad story, Adrienne tells her daughter about the great lost love of her life. Paul came to Rodanthe in order to speak with the bereaved family of a woman who had just died after he had operated on her. Paul, of course, was not to blame, but still he suffers inside. Add to that a recent divorce and an estranged child and the result is a tortured soul whom Adrienne finds absolutely irresistible. Of course, the beach, an impending storm, the fact that there are no other visitors around, a roaring fireplace, and any number of moments that could have been culled from a J. Crew catalogue and a Folgers’s commercial make romance just about inevitable. Sparks couldn’t be less subtle in this harshly mechanical story that adheres to formula in a way that would make an assembly-line romance writer blush.
Short, to the point, and absolutely unremarkable: sure to be another medium-hot romance-lite hit for Sparks, who at the very least can never be accused of overstaying his welcome.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2002
ISBN: 0-446-53133-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
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