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 beautifully written tribute to underappreciated emotions.
The author of Quiet turns her attention to sorrow and longing and how these emotions can be transformed into creativity and love.
Cain uses the term bittersweet to refer to a state of melancholy and specifically addresses individuals who have “a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world.” With great compassion, she explores causes for these emotions by candidly chronicling her personal experiences and those of others throughout history who have suffered loss, including Plato, Charles Darwin, C.S. Lewis, Leonard Cohen, and Maya Angelou. “As Angelou’s story suggests,” she writes, “many people respond to loss by healing in others the wounds that they themselves have suffered.” Cain argues persuasively that these emotions can be channeled into artistic pursuits such as music, writing, dancing, or cooking, and by tapping into them, we can transform “the way we parent, the way we lead, the way we love, and the way we die.” If we don’t transform our sorrows and longings of the past, she writes, we may inflict them on present relationships through abuse, domination, or neglect. Throughout, the author examines the concept of loss from various religious viewpoints, and she looks at the ways loss can affect individuals and how we can integrate it into our lives to our benefit. Cain contends that the romantic view of melancholy has “waxed and waned” over the years. Currently, a “tyranny of positivity” can often be found in the workplace, and the “social code” of keeping negative feelings hidden abounds. However, she points out the benefits that can come from opening up versus keeping everything inside. As a first step, she encourages us to examine our lives and ask ourselves what we are longing for, in a deep and meaningful way, and if we can turn that ache into a creative offering.
A beautifully written tribute to underappreciated emotions.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-451-49978-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.
A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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