A multifaceted, thought-provoking, and learned exploration of a painful subject.
A nurse specializing in cancer treatment shares her experiences after her son was diagnosed with leukemia in this debut memoir.
Post-White’s son, Brennan, was 4 years old when he became ill. The author began to worry after he started to experience leg and abdominal pains. After they visited a pediatrician, blood tests showed concerning abnormalities. As an oncology nurse, Post-White was aware of the grave significance of her son’s low hemoglobin count and braced herself for bad news. “I was a cancer nurse, researcher, and educator…but I had no training as a cancer mom,” remarks the author in her preface. Her memoir charts each step on Brennan’s road to recovery after his leukemia diagnosis, offering the dual perspectives of a highly trained nurse and a loving mother. Post-White’s writing poses probing questions asked by many whose lives have been touched by cancer, such as “Why Cancer? Why Now? Why Us?” She also explores her young son’s coping process by sharing pictures Brennan drew to express his feelings throughout his treatment. As a medical professional, the author takes a philosophical approach to surviving and facing fears, asking: “Can we ever be prepared for death? Or cancer?” Post-White’s writing is sharply analytical and grounded in actuality: “The reality is that one in ten childhood cancer survivors will have heart disease by the time they are forty.” But the delivery of stark facts is delicately counterbalanced with a profound excavation of personal emotions: “Darkness is a part of life, as it is a part of every rotation of the earth. But some nights felt blacker than others.” The result is a skillfully well-rounded memoir in which the author draws on her own experiences, charts Brennan’s medical and emotional progress, and alludes to the struggles of patients she has treated. While some readers may recognize that several cancer treatments have changed since the late 1990s, when Brennan was first diagnosed, Post-White’s account remains relevant, as contemporary protocols “include many of the same medications, schedules and ‘road maps.’ ” In a marketplace crowded with similar titles, the author’s informative work shares rich layers of a valuable perspective—delivering concise medical explanations, a nurse’s experience and compassion, and tender maternal understanding—making this book stand out from the rest.
A multifaceted, thought-provoking, and learned exploration of a painful subject.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4766-8710-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Toplight Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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