by Karen Rose Callan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 21, 2013
Highly personal, strangely comforting and profoundly moving.
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The special bond between a young woman and her exceptional grandmother extends far beyond the grave in this pleasingly metaphysical mashup of self-help manual and memoir.
In life, Callan’s grandma Rose was quite a woman—the kind of vital person who always seemed preternaturally plugged in and fully engaged in the endlessly wondrous world around her. Growing up in the woman’s electric orbit had a profound effect on the author. So much so that when Rose ultimately died at the age of 90, Callan continued to regularly interact with the deceased woman’s spirit in times of both trouble and doubt. “Grandma Rose didn’t waste any time setting up this new form of communication with us,” Callan writes. “She wanted to let everyone know right away, in as theatrical an approach as possible, that yes, she’s still here.” Featuring cozy vignettes of life with the author’s Broadway-loving grandma, each chapter concludes with examples of those otherworldly occurrences. Dinner plates suddenly crash, and songs containing particularly trenchant lyrics play at opportune times. As a yoga practitioner—as her grandmother was before her—the author is finely tuned to Eastern philosophy, so it’s not surprising that she excels in interpreting her warm, familial memories of both her grandmother and grandfather within a spiritual framework. In every recalled interaction with Rose, Callan finds New-Age lessons of mindfulness, self-determination, impermanence and the like. Those unaccustomed to such concepts, however, will still find plenty of other points of connection throughout this highly readable reminiscence of Grandma Rose. Take, for example, the charming story of how the author’s family once took on San Francisco’s famed Lombard Street in a 1968 Dodge Monaco dubbed “The Boat,” which should be enough to put a smile on the reader’s face. Whether the paranormal experiences are interpreted as truly supernatural or merely wishful thinking, they succeed in serving as profound testaments to the enduring power of familial love.
Highly personal, strangely comforting and profoundly moving.Pub Date: Dec. 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4827-0564-5
Page Count: 222
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Cheryl Strayed ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2015
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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by Glennon Doyle ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2020
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
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More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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