A well-written and thoughtful guide to managing a challenging process.
A debut manual focuses on coping with the aftermath of the negligent death or injury of a loved one.
Bachus combines personal and professional experiences in dealing with catastrophic injury and death to present a step-by-step guide to handling the legal, medical, financial, and emotional effects. The author is a personal injury attorney with more than two decades of experience representing victims and families in civil litigation, and he is also the son of a woman killed by a negligent driver. The book discusses the potential criminal and civil charges that may be brought, the rights and responsibilities of victims and their families, and the possible outcomes. Bachus explains autopsies, advance directives, estates and probate, and insurance. The volume’s final chapters address the emotional aspects of coping with death and injury, including grief, healing, and advocacy. Appendices provide information on each state’s relevant laws and offer templates for contacting police, prosecutors, and other officials. The manual is concise and informative, and the author does an excellent job of balancing the narrative between cut-and-dried facts and the nuances of his own experiences. (For instance, the discussion of the role of victims and families in the criminal justice system is punctuated by Bachus’ account of the driver who killed his mother being subject only to a minor fine because a box was left unchecked on the initial traffic citation.) Although it is clear that the author loved and still mourns his mother, the book’s overall tone is lawyerly and dispassionate rather than emotional. This allows the work to serve as a comprehensive resource rather than a call to arms, ensuring that victims and families are aware of their rights—not only in the courtroom, but also concerning communication, information, and reimbursements—and how to exercise them. The volume handles complex legal topics at an appropriate level that balances detail and readability (and emphasizes the importance of understanding how each state’s laws differ), making it useful to readers without a legal background.
A well-written and thoughtful guide to managing a challenging process.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5445-2795-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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