A heartbreaking but forthright, informative, and ultimately forward-looking cancer account.
A detailed memoir serves as a guide for patient advocates/caregivers whose significant others have terminal illnesses.
In May 2015, Lisk’s 40-something husband, Dennis, told her he had been “feeling a little dizzy lately.” She urged him to call his doctor, and he made an appointment to visit the physician in three weeks. Over the next few days, he began to show signs of increasing short-term memory loss and confusion. The author took over after the first week and got a same-day appointment. Dennis was immediately sent for an MRI, and, within an hour, the couple received unexpected and devastating news from the doctor: “ ‘There’s something really wrong with your brain,’ he said….‘It might be glioblastoma. You need to see the neurosurgeon tomorrow.’ ” (Glioblastoma is an especially aggressive cancer.) And so began an excruciating eight-month marathon during which Lisk took on the role of medical manager and full-time caregiver as well as de facto single parent to the couple’s two children, only 8 and 10 years old at the time. Early on, the author’s sister set up a blogging page for her on the social media forum CaringBridge. “I had no idea at this point,” Lisk writes, “that blogging was about to become my vehicle for speaking to my corner of the world. My refuge in a time of crisis and chaos.” This meticulous memoir is a selected collection of writings culled from those blogs. Each post is followed by long sections that expand on and give context to the early, just-the-facts CaringBridge entries. It is in these passages, despite some repetition, that the author clearly articulates the sadness and exhaustion during those months of losing her husband bit by inexorable bit. She did share one especially poignant moment with her CaringBridge followers: On Dec. 13, 2015, her daughter asked if she could give her father his Christmas present that day—in case he died before the holiday. Sure, Lisk decided, because on Christmas “he won’t remember that he already opened it.” Fellow travelers will find a soul mate in these pages, plus some helpful tips and resources.
A heartbreaking but forthright, informative, and ultimately forward-looking cancer account.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73-561360-4
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Bluhen Books
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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