Down-to-earth advice for bridging the divide between Venus and Mars.
A breezy and opinionated guide to improving marriage.
Childs—who has been in clinical practice for more than 40 years, holds numerous therapeutic certifications, and is “multi-divorced”—distills her personal and professional experience here into a chatty self-help guide. The catchy chapter titles give a sense of her upbeat style: “Why Can’t a Man Be More Like a Woman”; “The Power of the Penis, the Patriarchy, Politics, and the Pocketbook”; “Where, Oh, Where Has My Sexy Self Gone?” Asserting that the patterns she sees in her practice confirm the truism that “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” she walks the reader through the reasons why relationships fail (patterns and traumas experienced in childhood unconsciously carry over to the “relational space”) and what it takes to create a successful “conscious relationship.” The book combines client stories, inspiring quotations, takeaways from research in neurobiology, and references to famous psychologists (from Carl Jung and Alice Miller to John Gottman and Esther Perel) to explain the principles of “encounter-centered” couples counseling. She also provides descriptions of “rituals” (exercises) including “presencing” and “crossing the bridge” with enough detail to allow readers to experiment with them on their own. Although Childs asserts that “love-hate relationships can happen in any environment” and that she isn’t “male-bashing,” her focus is centered squarely around women in heterosexual relationships. A short list of references offers several suggestions for further reading. Child’s writing style is entertaining, humorous, and informal—reading her prose is like talking with a smart girlfriend or big sister. She sprinkles exclamation points liberally throughout and doesn’t shy away from colorful language. (One client says, “When he’s not acting like a dick, I find him lovable,” and another’s anger is dramatic: “Her inner beast rose from the coals of hell, blowing dragon fire from the depths of her being.”) The text is occasionally rambling or repetitive (for example, quotes by Albert Einstein and M. Scott Peck appear twice), and there are a few mistakes (mistaking Glenda for Glinda of Oz, regatta for regalia, and willful for willing) and some lapses into the passive voice. Such quibbles aside, the book is relatable and reassuring.
Down-to-earth advice for bridging the divide between Venus and Mars.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9798888241080
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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