An affecting and informative remembrance that centers on a mother-daughter connection.
A debut memoir of caregiving that addresses issues of life and death in a direct and hopeful way.
In this remembrance, former school counselor Staebler tells of moving back home to Centralia, Washington, from Raleigh, North Carolina, at 60 years old to take care of her ailing mother, who was dealing with dementia and increasing vision problems. Their relationship was slightly strained, but the author was determined to spend a year with her mother before transitioning her to a care facility; she ended up caring for her for more than five years. The author is candid about the struggles of caregiving, which readers who have experienced similar situations will find refreshing: “I’m back now, in her home, hoping it’s not too late to repair the breach as she fades into dementia,” the author writes. “She needs me now, but she is still the mother.” The book is split into years, with chapters in each year discussing months and days in detail. The book especially centers on Staebler’s conflicted feelings with notable honesty. Over the course of the book, readers watch as the author’s relationship with her mother changes, as feelings of pain and resentment give way to compassion. The author’s straightforward honesty about difficult aspects, including her mother’s failing memory and her own mental and physical exhaustion, is impressive. Her writing style is unadorned and easy to take in, even during the heavier moments. She also thought-provokingly details the vagaries of the health care system in America and how a caregiver must become an expert navigator to advocate effectively for a loved one.
An affecting and informative remembrance that centers on a mother-daughter connection.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-283-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2022
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
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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