A timelessly relevant chronicle on enduring grief.
How the impact of human loss transcends the lives of the bereaved.
As she did in the bestselling Motherless Daughters (1994), which examined the emotional challenges of women who grew up without a maternal figure, Edelman dissects the dynamics of grief. “I wish there were a foolproof method for ‘getting over’ the death of someone we love,” she writes in the lucid preamble. However, “everything I’ve experienced, learned, and observed over the past thirty-eight years has taught me otherwise.” Drawing on her in-depth interviews with 81 individuals, the author looks at how the grieving process shaped her subjects’ lives and could potentially impact their futures as well. Edelman’s personal journey, though repetitive, is also noteworthy: Her mother died of breast cancer in 1981 at age 42, and she discusses the ever evolving meaning of her death, particularly once she became a parent and “really understood how foreshortened my mother’s life had been and what she’d missed out on by dying so young.” The author also explores grief from a historical perspective through eras devastated by war and disease, and she taps into psychological, societal, and gender-specific patterns of mourning, referencing research studies on such concepts as “the rings of grief.” Sensitive readers should brace for the heartbreaking profiles of people whose lives never fully rebounded from the catastrophic loss of a loved one, whether the death was sudden, protracted, or shrouded in mystery. These varied perspectives coalesce to show how grief endures longer than most people ever realize. Edelman emphasizes that while we may never truly outlive the fallout from loss, it becomes an element of life that can be integrated into our own unique versions of felicity. “Unexpressed grief from the past may be one of the most overlooked public health crises of our time,” writes the author, who proactively seeks to change cultural perceptions about the way it is viewed, with an eye toward improved support networks for post-traumatic growth.
A timelessly relevant chronicle on enduring grief.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-399-17978-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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