An eloquent portrait of a grieving process.
A debut collection of memoiristic essays that share the many shades of one woman’s grief, along with occasional moments of optimism.
Psychology professor Katz was only 45 years old when her 57-year-old husband, Tristram “Tris” Smith, suddenly died. On a Monday morning, the author was in a coffee-shop meeting with a former student, when Tris sent her a text: “May be having heart attack. Called 911. Ambulance on the way.” Unfortunately, Katz’s phone had been turned off, and by the time she received the message, it was too late. Initial shock gave way to despair and crippling grief: “After Tris died, I became cold in every sense of the word,” she writes. “Icy hardness spread across my body, inside my mind.” She barely ate, which caused her shrink physically, just as she emotionally shrank into herself. However, she attended support groups, finding comfort in common, shared experiences and learning coping mechanisms that she describes as the “tasks of grief work.” These are made up of two primary components: “to process the feelings and make meaning from the loss,” and “to learn to live a new life in which your loved one is physically absent.” At first, she was more committed to the second tenet. But six months after Tris’ death, Katz found that she became even more emotionally fragile, and she wrote a poignant letter to Tris: “Reality has sunk into my bones, having pierced my flesh, my heart, my most tender self.” Many readers who have experienced loss themselves will relate to such visceral passages, in which she puts into words the kind of gripping pain that’s often so difficult to describe; another notable moment is when she writes a letter to “Grief” itself: “A malignant virus, you’ve entered my body and overwhelmed my system by festering and multiplying.” However, in this finely wrought memoir, readers also get a sense of her journey through pain to a hopeful future. Katz also includes some occasional light touches of humor in her memoir, especially in the final section, which details the awkwardness of entering the world of online dating.
An eloquent portrait of a grieving process.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64-742149-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
SEEN & HEARD
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 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.
