by Isadora Beauregard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 20, 2015
Highly recommended for the divorced and for those contemplating or embarking on divorce.
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Beauregard’s debut memoir recalls an almost unimaginably terrible divorce interwoven with hard-earned advice on how to overcome crushing adversity.
By her own harrowing account, Beauregard hardly sounds like a victim. Raised in an upper-middle-class Connecticut family, she’s privileged, moneyed, well-traveled, and disciplined by ballet, a young woman seemingly on her way to happiness when she wed a man of Italian descent with a strong sense of family, matching her own. Her husband, she writes, turned out to possess a violent temper. As the years passed, he became progressively more domineering, controlling, and physically abusive. She had bruises both physical and emotional to prove it when her divorce case reached the courtroom after her abortive attempt to run away with the children. But in what, in her telling, sounds like a criminal act, the judge awarded physical custody of her three sons and infant daughter to this better-lawyered, courtroom-clever monster; the judge even tacked on child support payments due from her to him. When she didn’t pay on time, she barely escaped jail. Her loss grew even greater when she voluntarily signed over her share of the former family house to her ex-husband in hopes it would at least stop him from taking the children out of the country. Left with nothing, this ravaged and lost mother-in-exile here describes how she gradually recovered herself and her motherhood by using a technique she calls tunnel vision to block out negativity, end the pity party, shelve the violin, and focus laserlike on positive energy flow within an imagined tunnel. The vivid originality of this philosophy, which turns the dictionary definition of tunnel vision on its ear, makes Beauregard’s book succor for all who have gone through the horrors of divorce, particularly with children involved. But her more generalized admonitions tend to be scattershot, thus losing force. Some of her advice—love yourself, don’t look back but do look for silver linings—has been heard many times before. It’s also disappointing that she ends this otherwise authentic, inspiring story of personal grit with the hackneyed phrase “Go for it!” As for the divorce, readers might be eager to hear from the other side to get more context for the terrible affair.
Highly recommended for the divorced and for those contemplating or embarking on divorce.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1939288936
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Beauregard Books
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Glennon Doyle ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2020
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
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New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Matt Haig ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 2016
A vibrant, encouraging depiction of a sinister disorder.
A British novelist turns to autobiography to report the manifold symptoms and management of his debilitating disease, depression.
Clever author Haig (The Humans, 2013, etc.) writes brief, episodic vignettes, not of a tranquil life but of an existence of unbearable, unsustainable melancholy. Throughout his story, presented in bits frequently less than a page long (e.g., “Things you think during your 1,000th panic attack”), the author considers phases he describes in turn as Falling, Landing, Rising, Living, and, finally, simply Being with spells of depression. Haig lists markers of his unseen disease, including adolescent angst, pain, continual dread, inability to speak, hypochondria, and insomnia. He describes his frequent panic attacks and near-constant anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. Haig also assesses the efficacy of neuroscience, yoga, St. John’s wort, exercise, pharmaceuticals, silence, talking, walking, running, staying put, and working up the courage to do even the most seemingly mundane of tasks, like visiting the village store. Best for the author were reading, writing, and the frequent dispensing of kindnesses and love. He acknowledges particularly his debt to his then-girlfriend, now-wife. After nearly 15 years, Haig is doing better. He appreciates being alive and savors the miracle of existence. His writing is infectious though sometimes facile—and grammarians may be upset with the writer’s occasional confusion of the nominative and objective cases of personal pronouns. Less tidy and more eclectic than William Styron’s equally brief, iconic Darkness Visible, Haig’s book provides unobjectionable advice that will offer some help and succor to those who experience depression and other related illnesses. For families and friends of the afflicted, Haig’s book, like Styron’s, will provide understanding and support.
A vibrant, encouraging depiction of a sinister disorder.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-312872-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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