A frank, earnest memoir of the difficulties of parenthood.
Morgan recounts her struggles to mother a troubled man in this debut mental health memoir.
As a single mother of an adolescent boy, Morgan reminded herself to pay close attention, knowing Dylan—like all sons—would change as he grew older. It wasn’t until June of 2011—when the then-23-year-old Dylan was arrested for firing an illegal gun after a party and was then also found to be growing marijuana in his apartment—that she realized just how far he had drifted from the boy she knew. Morgan, a college professor, was at first horrified by the impending gossip sure to spread through the small conservative Kentucky town, but she began to consider the warning signs: Dylan’s struggles with bipolar disorder, his DUIs, his refusal to find a job. After some cajoling, Dylan agreed to enter a Drug Court program that would help him avoid his three felony charges, though he only had one shot. Any mistakes would have landed him in jail. To ensure that Dylan completed the program, Morgan realized she needed to change strategies—to be more understanding of her son’s mental health and addiction problems, while not being too lenient. Morgan was forced to also consider her own co-dependency and find a path through the minefield of motherhood to save both her son and herself. Morgan’s prose is ruminative and laden with imagistic language: “For a long time, while my son was very young, I thought he was a smaller version of Attila the Hun. I thought he had only three settings on his dial: brash, bold, and barbarian.” Dylan is a difficult, often infuriating figure, and Morgan confronts his issues (and her own) with candid, sometimes-painful self-awareness. Her accounts of the justice system and rehabilitation are illuminating, and while the details sometimes overwhelm, the reading experience manages to capture the immense frustration that she (and others) no doubt felt. If memoirs exist to depict how some navigate situations that others can’t imagine, this one is a great success.
A frank, earnest memoir of the difficulties of parenthood.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63152-644-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Despite the whopping length, there's not a wasted word in this superb, swiftly moving narrative, which brings new and...
A great, troubled, and, it seems, overlooked president receives his due from the Pulitzer-winning historian/biographer McCullough (Truman, 1992, etc.).
John Adams, to gauge by the letters and diaries from which McCullough liberally quotes, did not exactly go out of his way to assume a leadership role in the tumultuous years of the American Revolution, though he was always “ambitious to excel.” Neither, however, did he shy from what he perceived to be a divinely inspired historical necessity; he took considerable personal risks in spreading the American colonists’ rebellion across his native Massachusetts. Adams gained an admirable reputation for fearlessness and for devotion not only to his cause but also to his beloved wife Abigail. After the Revolution, though he was quick to yield to the rebellion's military leader, George Washington, part of the reason that the New England states enjoyed influence in a government dominated by Virginians was the force of Adams's character. His lifelong nemesis, who tested that character in many ways, was also one of his greatest friends: Thomas Jefferson, who differed from Adams in almost every important respect. McCullough depicts Jefferson as lazy, a spendthrift, always in debt and always in trouble, whereas Adams never rested and never spent a penny without good reason, a holdover from the comparative poverty of his youth. Despite their sometimes vicious political battles (in a bafflingly complex environment that McCullough carefully deconstructs), the two shared a love of books, learning, and revolutionary idealism, and it is one of those wonderful symmetries of history that both died on the same day, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. While McCullough never misses an episode in Adams's long and often troubled life, he includes enough biographical material on Jefferson that this can be considered two biographies for the price of one—which explains some of its portliness.
Despite the whopping length, there's not a wasted word in this superb, swiftly moving narrative, which brings new and overdue honor to a Founding Father.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-81363-7
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
What we've all been awaiting: the first of Hemingway's posthumous works he began in 1958 and finished in 1960. This is a memoir of his expatriate days in the twenties, and MacLeish's little poem about the young man with the panther good looks who whittled a style for his times in the sawmill attic in Paris comes to life here. What also comes to light is the "inside story," or the very personal revelations, parts of whicy may become a cause scandale. Not only is the Fitzgerald portrait ungenerous, but the disclosures of his sexual difficulties with Zelda are embarrassing. Miss Stein is also victimized, and there are allusions to puzzling perversities. Pound, Ford, Eliot, Lewis and Joyce are around and they are treated with affection, or affectionate malice. The best passages are the descriptive ones— fine writing with all the supple surety of Sun— of bookstalls, cafes, streets, the Seine, race tracks, and travel. And of course there's Hemingway on his wife Hadley, and Hemingway on Hemingway..... Mary McCarthy's famous attack on Salinger scored him for following Papa's special club of OK people (like him) versus the "others" (unlike him). The memoir has something of that snobbery and certain people may go after it accordingly. Still, whatever the indiscretions, it is an important work, a literary source from a master. There can be little doubt of its interest and attraction for many as a reprise of a now legendary time when Hemingway was young and happy and "invulnerable," and a place— well, "There is never any ending to Paris.
Pub Date: May 5, 1964
ISBN: 0684833638
Page Count: 207
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1964
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