An impassioned and analytic guide to taking control of faltering relationships before they fall apart.
A couples therapist offers a comprehensive guide to maintaining healthy, intimate relationships.
In her nonfiction debut, Elmquist acknowledges at the outset that the “stressors” working on any committed relationship are many, varied, and serious: “Financial obligations and work priorities, life responsibilities and accountabilities, and the daily needs of family and friends [are] all asking for your attention while you and your partner attempt to maintain individual and collective hopes and dreams.” At the heart of her advice is the concept of a “reset,” during which couples are urged to step back and look holistically at the changing nature of their relationship. Elmquist relates the familiar and worrying statistic that most troubled couples wait a very long time—the average is around six years—before seeking out professional therapy. She aims to drastically shorten that interval by equipping couples with the tools they need in order to detect and address problems as they arise. The key is something that Elmquist calls the “Six-Stage Change Cycle of Committed Couple Relationships,” which aims to help couples identify the various evolving stages of their relationship: “You and Me,” “We,” “I and I,” “The We/I Plateau,” “The D-Factor” (involving differentiating one’s personal identity), and “Us or Me.” The author effectively points out that these stages are fluid things, taking different forms with different partners, but she notes that they are nevertheless universal: “We all play each of these roles at one point or another in our relationships,” she writes. “To deny that is to deny we breathe.” Overall, the book’s near-total lack of platitudes and magic bullets is very refreshing. Through the use of ample case studies of her own clients to illustrate her points, Elmquist makes her step-by-step breakdowns immediately applicable to her readers. She also employs a uniform tone of enthusiastic encouragement throughout (“Getting started is the key. Momentum follows action!”), lightening her prescription of hard, detailed work that every committed relationship requires.
An impassioned and analytic guide to taking control of faltering relationships before they fall apart.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9974581-3-8
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Risk
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A crash course in big-bucks tort litigation, as rich as any novel on the scene. In the mid-'70s, the small industrial town of Woburn, Mass., found itself afflicted with a plague of biblical dimensions: 12 local children, 8 of them close neighbors, had died (or were dying) of leukemia. The parents suspected the water supply, which was foul-smelling, rusty, and undrinkable, but they had no hard evidence of a link to the cancers. But in 1979, the accidental discovery of carcinogenic industrial wastes in the town's wells led the grieving parents to hire personal-injury lawyer Jan Schlichtmann, new to the profession but intoxicated with the sizable damages he'd won so far. This is magazine journalist Harr's first book, but his complex portrait of Schlichtmann is the work of a master. Egomaniacal, quixotic, workaholic, greedy, altruistic, and naive, Schlichtmann is Everylawyer, and as he allows the Woburn case to consume his practice, he almost loses his license and his life. Harr wisely downplays the dying-children angle, focusing instead on Schlichtmann's case against the two corporate Goliaths who dumped the waste: Beatrice Foods (represented by Jerome Facher of Boston's Hale & Dorr) and W.R. Grace (represented by William Cheeseman of Boston's Foley, Hoag & Eliot). Despite their white- shoe lineage, Facher and Cheeseman play dirty, withholding evidence and repeatedly seeking Schlichtmann's suspension for having filed a ``frivolous'' lawsuit. But the real villain of the story is Federal District Judge Walter J. Skinner, whose personal dislike of Schlichtmann (and camaraderie with Facher) leads him to grant the defense's motion to split the trial into two protracted phases. By the time Judge Skinner submits four incomprehensible questions to be bewildered jury, Woburn's young victims have been forgottenand the whole legal system has suffered a tragic loss. A paranoid legal thriller as readable as Grisham, but important and illuminating. (Film rights to Disney)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-394-56349-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
A generous and singularly insightful examination of memoir.
A bestselling nonfiction writer offers spirited commentary about memoir, the literary form that has become synonymous with her name.
Personal narrative has exploded in popularity over the last 20 years. Yet, as Karr (Lit: A Memoir, 2009, etc.) points out, memoir still struggles to attain literary respectability. “There is a lingering snobbery in the literary world,” she writes, “that wants to disqualify what is broadly called nonfiction from the category of ‘literature.’ ” In this book, Karr offers both an apology for and a sharp-eyed exploration of this form born from her years as a practitioner as well as a distinguished English professor at Syracuse University. She begins by considering classroom “experiments” she has conducted to show the slipperiness of memory and arguing the need to give latitude to writers tackling memoir. Writing with the intent to record what rings true rather than exact is one thing; writing with the intent to lie is another. Voice is another critical aspect of any memoir that manages to endure through time. By examining works by writers as diverse as Frank McCourt and Vladimir Nabokov, Karr demonstrates that it is in fact the very thing by which a great memoir “lives or dies.” Rather than focus on the narrative truism of “show-don’t-tell,” Karr thoughtfully elaborates on what she calls “carnality”—the ability to transform memory into a multisensory experience—for the reader. When wed to a desire to move beyond the traps of ego and render personal “psychic struggle” honestly and without fear, carnality can lead to writing that not only “wring[s] some truth from the godawful mess of a single life,” but also connects deeply with readers. Karr’s sassy Texas wit and her down-to-earth observations about both the memoir form and how to approach it combine to make for lively and inspiring reading.
A generous and singularly insightful examination of memoir.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-222306-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
PROFILES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
