A revealing, if at times tedious, chronicle of the first year of a corporate executive’s retirement.
A high-powered executive decides to dedicate her retirement to a spiritual, emotional, and physical transformation in this debut journal of a New Age seeker.
For 36 years, Ramsey was the main breadwinner for her family, working in the upper echelons of retail administration to support an affluent lifestyle for herself and her stay-at-home husband, Rich, who did most of the work to maintain their household. As her retirement approached, she found herself suddenly demoted from VIP to PIP: “a previously important person,” facing the daunting prospect of structuring a new life and identity to fill her free schedule. She approached the task with gusto, devoting herself to “meditation, exercise, healthy food, painting, studying, and time with friends.” As her retirement began, she made a commitment to document her journey in a daily journal for one year. The author’s process includes both the sublime, such as a trip to a luxury retreat in Arizona and a European odyssey, and the mundane, from the sleepless frustration of training a new puppy to the agonizing trauma of trying to help a self-destructive sibling make more life-affirming choices. Throughout the pivotal year, Ramsey’s tone is open and inquisitive, whether examining the changes in sexuality in long-term relationships or the differences and similarities between Islam and Christianity. The author is a committed and candid diarist, disclosing the missteps and insecurities as well as the pleasures and achievements of her retired life. Her writing is conversational and cogent, and some sections provide a short course in the religious principles that Ramsey studied during the year. Some readers may tire of the overly detailed descriptions of sustainably produced dinners and puppy pooping schedules that make the text seem repetitious and overlong. Others may be alienated by the unacknowledged privilege of the author and Rich’s situation, which allows them to leave their two unruly dogs to attend obedience school without them as they depart for a tour of Europe. But the depiction of a family’s struggle to help an addicted relative is heartfelt, and Ramsey’s quest to find meaning in life after her busy career is documented with openness and sincerity.
A revealing, if at times tedious, chronicle of the first year of a corporate executive’s retirement.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 488
Publisher: Clovercroft Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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