by Helena Hjalmarsson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2013
At times, the level of detail, including descriptions of playtimes and the names of just about everyone Lina has encountered...
The story of a mother’s transformation in learning to care for her special needs daughter.
At age 3, Hjalmarsson’s (co-editor: The Quotable Book Lover, 1999) daughter, Lina, experienced seizures, became unresponsive and lost her speech. As Lina got increasingly difficult and destructive—screaming, biting, throwing tantrums and running from the house—Hjalmarsson tried a variety of techniques to help her daughter. She moved from the city to the suburbs and back again, tried out numerous schools and caregivers, and put Lina on special diets and medications, both traditional and alternative. While many of these attempts seemed to help Lina for a time, she invariably regressed. As a psychoanalyst, Hjalmarsson was perhaps more aware than many parents of the theories surrounding autism treatments, and she brings this knowledge to the book, offering detailed descriptions of each therapy and the ensuing results. But the book is more about the author herself and how she managed the difficulties of raising such a challenging child. Her marriage fell apart (although she and her husband remain close friends), and she was, fortunately, able to work part-time in order to dedicate her life almost exclusively to caring for Lina. One of the more interesting passages is a description of Hjalmarsson hiding from her daughter in the basement and then dashing into the yard in a desperate attempt to escape her. It’s a powerful sequence, showing the extreme challenges of living with an autistic child, and more such scenes would add depth to the memoir.
At times, the level of detail, including descriptions of playtimes and the names of just about everyone Lina has encountered in her eight years, becomes tedious. But the author’s positive, optimistic attitude and her thorough descriptions of therapies will be helpful to the parents and caretakers of autistic children.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62087-595-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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