An entertaining mix of canny advice and brash inspiration.
Ask in the right way and ye shall receive—raises, discounts, nights out with the boys, you name it—according to this sprightly self-helper.
Williams, a saleswoman and life coach, feels that people aren’t getting what they want because they’re too reticent, shy or fearful of rejection to pipe up and demand it. So she presents this treatise on the theory and practice of making requests, which amounts to a grand tutorial in pointed communication. The author teaches us to suss out the hidden “What’s in It For Me” motivators, from financial gain to altruistic glow, that make others accede to requests. Readers also learn to insinuate positive expectations into the request, to mirror the recipient’s mood and body language, to rationally deflect objections and, if that doesn’t work, to move beyond the realm of reason (“if you feel the tears coming on, let them out!”). We learn the subtle art of the “non-request request,” the very unsubtle art of manipulating a husband into compliance—promise him sex—and a sure-fire trick for taking your plea right to the CEO: tell his screening secretary that “he wouldn’t want anyone else to know why I’m calling.” There’s much practical wisdom here on everything from wringing the best deal out of a car salesman or mortgage lender to asking a motormouth coworker to shut up, but at times there is an over-the-top fervor to the author’s advocacy. Williams tells readers not to feel entitled, but the lengthy sections on retail bargaining tacitly prescribe a lifestyle of relentless wheedling—“Will you accept this expired coupon?”—that borders on recklessness: you should only follow her suggestion to “add to your restaurant experience by making atypical requests” that go “outside the box” if you want to incur the wrath of your food handlers. Still, taken with a pinch of common sense, this is an insightful, insistent how-to guide.
An entertaining mix of canny advice and brash inspiration.Pub Date: April 14, 2010
ISBN: 978-0984439409
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Good Day Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
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
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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