A moving, compassionate, and poignant tribute to the enduring bonds of family amid disease, this account should be a...
A devastating medical diagnosis redirects the future of a loving gay family.
When journalist Hunter MacIntyre is officially diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, the news is crippling not only for him, but also for his husband, Ethan, a high school teacher, and their 5-year-old daughter, Amy. Prolific Swedish author Hirschi’s (Jonathan Trilogy, 2016, etc.) emotional tale opens with Ethan's presenting MacIntyre’s life through the journalist’s notes. Ethan—now a widower with a teenage daughter—continues to mourn the loss yet offers MacIntyre’s diary in hopes that it will illuminate the heartbreak of the disease that robbed him of his livelihood, his perception of the world around him, and ultimately his home life. MacIntyre’s history plays out within a narrative that is told through epistolary chapters weaving in his personal chronicle of gay fatherhood, objections to his family unit being considered “different” by his magazine editor, his married life with Ethan, and cherished and bittersweet childhood memories. He also writes from the internal vantage point of a frustrated man struggling with an increasingly faulty memory, the internalized terror of paranoia, the allure of suicide, and the solemn acceptance of living “with a death sentence.” As his family genetics predestined MacIntyre to acquire the debilitating disease, he writes of his mother’s plight with dementia-induced paranoia. Hirschi expands the focus and perspective of his character’s ordeal with the inclusion of Ethan’s own first-person narrative recounted both as MacIntyre’s health declined and in contemporary hindsight as a widower, years after his husband’s shocking death. Through his words, readers become acquainted with Ethan as a doting husband, the evolution of their relationship from first impressions to a cozy wedding ceremony in Italy, Amy’s birth, and MacIntyre’s crushing diagnosis and mental decline. An immensely thoughtful writer, Hirschi also allows his characters to ruminate over situations they have little control over, such as MacIntyre’s father’s remarriage and concerns over what kind of father Ethan’s new partner would be to Amy. Themes of longing, helplessness, and enduring love further inform this affecting tale, whose multiple narratives coalesce beautifully as they chronologically and touchingly document the incremental decline of a loving father and how a family must carry on despite its anguish.
A moving, compassionate, and poignant tribute to the enduring bonds of family amid disease, this account should be a must-read for anyone in the throes of an ordeal involving Alzheimer’s disease.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78645-161-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Beaten Track Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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