An intimate, healing conversation from beyond.
Findlen, a former social worker and now holistic life guide and “polarity therapist,” pens her first book, a spiritual journal on the relationship she developed with her deceased daughter.
When her daughter, Kori Sue, died in a Jeep accident, the author, seeking solace and torn with grief, began writing letters to Kori in her journal, exploring her pain, her rage, her anguish. Then, suddenly, Kori began to respond in letters of her own. Long the stock of mediums, Romantic poets, and mystics, automatic writing allows a writer like Findlen to overcome the seemingly unconquerable rift between the living and the dead and to explore and to heal through this writing process. Findlen’s book, the result of such an exploration, attempts to share with the living the wisdom and insight of the dead. “You should hear the Ommms here, Mom. They vibrate through everything,” Kori, the “co-author,” writes with her typical enthusiasm in describing this rather alternative afterlife in which Jesus and Buddha are buddies and the thoughts of the dead can instantly manifest. The informality of these letters and New Age after-death visions sometimes comes in a jarring contrast to the sententious wisdom Kori offers her mother. Kori takes flying lessons, then meets for playtime with some spirit children and studies with Druids. She continually counsels her mother to overcome her grief, not to lose faith, to meditate and gain spiritual balance. Eventually, after constant prodding from her daughter, Findlen begins to gain strength and start the long journey to overcome her grief and despair. Findlen and her daughter share the same casual New Age–inflected writing style, both often ending their exhortatory sentences with the exclamation “Ha!” Daughter advises her mom to anticipate the “Big Shift,” when everyone on Earth will magically undergo a mind change, but really the focus in this book is on Findlen’s transformation and her desire to turn her exploration into a book, an ambition fostered and encouraged by her daughter and her afterlife “team” of spirit supporters. Though sometimes repetitive, it’s an often engaging account of a spirit dialogue likely to appeal to spiritually inclined readers.
An intimate, healing conversation from beyond.Pub Date: June 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5043-3038-1
Page Count: 408
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A vibrant, encouraging depiction of a sinister disorder.
A British novelist turns to autobiography to report the manifold symptoms and management of his debilitating disease, depression.
Clever author Haig (The Humans, 2013, etc.) writes brief, episodic vignettes, not of a tranquil life but of an existence of unbearable, unsustainable melancholy. Throughout his story, presented in bits frequently less than a page long (e.g., “Things you think during your 1,000th panic attack”), the author considers phases he describes in turn as Falling, Landing, Rising, Living, and, finally, simply Being with spells of depression. Haig lists markers of his unseen disease, including adolescent angst, pain, continual dread, inability to speak, hypochondria, and insomnia. He describes his frequent panic attacks and near-constant anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. Haig also assesses the efficacy of neuroscience, yoga, St. John’s wort, exercise, pharmaceuticals, silence, talking, walking, running, staying put, and working up the courage to do even the most seemingly mundane of tasks, like visiting the village store. Best for the author were reading, writing, and the frequent dispensing of kindnesses and love. He acknowledges particularly his debt to his then-girlfriend, now-wife. After nearly 15 years, Haig is doing better. He appreciates being alive and savors the miracle of existence. His writing is infectious though sometimes facile—and grammarians may be upset with the writer’s occasional confusion of the nominative and objective cases of personal pronouns. Less tidy and more eclectic than William Styron’s equally brief, iconic Darkness Visible, Haig’s book provides unobjectionable advice that will offer some help and succor to those who experience depression and other related illnesses. For families and friends of the afflicted, Haig’s book, like Styron’s, will provide understanding and support.
A vibrant, encouraging depiction of a sinister disorder.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-312872-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
SEEN & HEARD
Readers Donate Depression Book After Star Suicide
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