Those curious about the pros and cons of weight loss surgery will find some answers here, though Whitely makes it clear that...
In her early 40s and topping 350 pounds, motivational speaker Whitely (Gorge: My Journey Up Kilimanjaro at 300 Pounds, 2015, etc.) decided that she needed to do something about her weight.
Though proclaimed fit by her doctors and an avid hiker—she had made it up Kilimanjaro twice—the author felt uncomfortable in her body. “My weight defined me and had defined me for years, decades filled with agony and a healthy serving of self-loathing,” she writes. Dieting didn’t work, so she opted for weight loss surgery. Her memoir describes her life before and after the surgery and the stages of decision-making, which included convincing her marathon-running husband that surgery would be the right choice. Though happy about her choice, which allowed her to lose enough weight to be comfortable with exercising again, Whitely doesn't make the process sound unrealistically easy. While the physical adjustment to taking in tiny portions of food comes across as relatively simple, the psychological adjustment was obviously harder, requiring regular visits to a psychologist and constant communication with a support group. More of the memoir is devoted to life before surgery than after. The author raises concerns about her three children and the humiliation she thinks they feel about having a fat, binge-eating mother, as well as her fear that they will inherit her tendency to obesity. Written in brief, punchy chapters, the memoir doesn't stint on exploring the shame that Whitely continually fears regarding the judgment of others, whether she's worrying that a passer-by is silently criticizing her for allowing her daughter to eat a hot dog, embarrassed about using a seat-belt extension on an airplane, or hiring an au pair to do the active things with her kids that she can't do.
Those curious about the pros and cons of weight loss surgery will find some answers here, though Whitely makes it clear that her decision is a personal one and that others might take different paths.Pub Date: July 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-58005-647-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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