A disturbing case study that isn’t revealing enough.
A son recalls in anguishing detail the physical and emotional damage inflicted by his mother as well as the healing he finds.
Wedam’s memoir gets off to a dramatic start when he says of his mother, Wanda, “I only recall her shooting at my dad twice.” A “whore” who prostituted herself and squandered family money on booze, clothes and jewelry, she blamed him and his siblings for ruining her body and life. As a boy, a hungry Wedam scavenged the livestock feed for bits of corn to eat; the family cat removed the mice. Wedam devotes pages to his beatings, when he steeled himself against the pain by telling his mother, “That does not hurt.” As if Mommie Dearest weren’t terror enough, Wedam writes of the time “Uncle Johnny tried to offer me as a human sacrifice.” Fortunately, Uncle Johnny gets institutionalized. Only as youngest-child Wedam graduated from high school did dad finally grow a pair and divorce this monstrous woman—but she wasn’t through inflicting damage. When Wedam and a sister returned home for clothes, she drove after them in her Thunderbird. Eventually, some redemption appears, if briefly. When Wedam is in veterinary school, his mom comes to visit, bringing him a handmade afghan. He hears she became a Christian and was diagnosed with cancer. Alas, Wedam—and readers—know too much to sympathize with her. He later realizes he’s suffering from the “sin of bitterness”—yet it’s a miracle he’s survived. Wedam wraps things up too quickly after all he discloses, and questions remain unanswered. Was Wanda’s repentance genuine? How is Wedam today? Why did dad get a pass all those years? The book sometimes reads like a rambling, stream-of-consciousness journal entry: Words are omitted, and typos are frequent. At times, the author also resorts to clichés: “meaner than a rattlesnake” and “storm clouds gathering”—words that don’t convey the bleakness of his story. Wedam’s candor and strength are admirable, but there’s little takeaway for the reader.
A disturbing case study that isn’t revealing enough.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-1625100597
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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