Struggles against racism, marital abuse and obesity yield life-lessons in this self-help manifesto.
Growing up as a mixed-race second-class citizen under South Africa’s apartheid regime gave the author plenty of obstacles to overcome, including an inferior education, job discrimination and the daily humiliation of pass laws. Equally rankling was her family’s membership in a strict Christian denomination—her father was a minister—that accepted white supremacy and sexism and imparted a dour worldview dripping with guilt and fear of hellfire. Worst of all was her 18-year marriage to a violent, sadistic man (another minister) who beat her in front of their daughters, raped her at knife-point and dunked her head in a vomit-filled toilet bowl. Mercuur’s account of violations both intimate and impersonal, and of the helplessness and depression they induced, is full of harrowing detail; readers will be moved by her perseverance—she rose to become a bank executive—and by her efforts to understand and forgive the injuries she suffered. The book falters when she tries to elaborate a philosophy from her travails. In long-winded, meandering, repetitive passages, Mercuur harps on a set of simplistic or vague principles: seek sustained improvement instead of mere change; think for yourself rather than accepting dogmas imposed by others; pitilessly search for truth, which can only be apprehended by “physical knowledge” gleaned from the five senses; take personal responsibility for everything that happens to you, racial oppression included. The practical focus of her creed is on weight loss, which she undertakes with the help of an old high-school flame who became her guru after her husband’s death; the regimen of “isolated muscle training” that he put her on constitutes the only concrete advice she has for readers. Alas, Mercuur’s obsession with fitness and appearance results in insights—“Who we are physically displays who we are spiritually”—that are dubious and uninspiring. A riveting biography weighed down by dull, superficial pensées.
Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2009
ISBN: 978-1439256305
Page Count: 232
Publisher: BookSurge
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
There are many lessons to be learned in these pages–not least of them, to keep your eyes open for oncoming teenagers.
"I'm a number on their ledger," writes O'Malley, in this thoughtful memoir of consumer David versus insurer Goliath. "And they're dedicated to a new medical oath: This above all, do no harm to our financials."
O'Malley suffered major spinal trauma when a sleeping 17-year-old driver rammed her car one August afternoon. Unable to work, and at both physical and emotional distance from her young adult son, she finds herself in the early pages of her memoir to be a kind of surrogate aunt to a young immigrant girl and a surrogate child to an aunt of her own; her portraits of these characters, and indeed of most of the figures in the narrative, are marked by affection, warmth and knowing humor. But the tale takes on a dark cast as O'Malley soon stands accused of being a malingerer and denied long-term disability pay while enduring more and more physical distress in the wake of her accident. In quest of relief, she tries the expected route–namely, scheduling appointments at her HMO and undergoing tests to discover why her pain should persist months after the accident. What follows is a Kafkaesque sequence of misunderstandings and evasions, as, by her account, one specialist after another administers the wrong test, takes the wrong X-ray and eventually cuts into the wrong section of her spine. In the subsequent chapters, she becomes something of an authority on her pain, providing at least some rebuttal to arrogant doctors who, one by one, ask what fine medical school she attended to allow her any opinion in the matter of her own health. O'Malley's unhappy tale ends well enough, thanks to the help of a doctor on the opposite end of the country from the angry neurologist who becomes her bête noire. Readers may be a tad frustrated, though, to discover that the real ending is a settlement whose terms she cannot discuss, inasmuch as she has discussed everything else so candidly.
There are many lessons to be learned in these pages–not least of them, to keep your eyes open for oncoming teenagers.Pub Date: June 24, 2004
ISBN: 1-4134-5487-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A collection that will surely interest readers already devoted to Virginia City lore, but that may not grab a general...
An amalgamation of ghost stories set in the remote town where Mark Twain honed his skills 140 years ago.
During a trip to Virginia City in 1999, Bruns and a friend approached a building with the intent of exploring it. As they entered, however, she stopped abruptly–this place seems haunted, she said. Bruns had always found supernatural phenomena such as ghosts fascinating, but had never known quite what to make of claims that otherworldly beings exist. This experience, though, intrigued and annoyed him simultaneously. How could she sense ghosts when he couldn't? He decided to investigate further by interviewing certain people in Virginia City. Tales were "hurled" at Bruns, "unsolicited at the very mention" that he was collecting ghost stories. As a result, many of the stories name actual people and, "at least in their minds, actual events." Inundated with varying versions and copious detail, Bruns decided he would "combine different stories from different people into a single narrative, just to capture all the many ways in which spirits choose to manifest themselves." This was a dubious decision, as many of the stories are simply not compelling as fiction and track poorly as nonfiction. The word "true" muddies the interpretation of the stories, as does his caveat that "Like Mark Twain, I see no reason why I should let the truth get in the way of a good story." After chronicling the hauntings of specific sites–the Silver Terrace Cemetery, the Old Funeral Parlor, a D Street Residence, the Gold Hill Hotel and the Pioneer Emporium, to name a few–Bruns provides briefly researched histories that work nicely. Four maps at the back of the book aid understanding of northern Nevada, Virginia City itself and two of the haunted locales.
A collection that will surely interest readers already devoted to Virginia City lore, but that may not grab a general audience.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-9745217-1-X
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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