Though a standard inspiration-meets–self-help book, it provides some useful advice for Christian women facing serious...
This program of prayer, journaling, and self-study seeks to help women re-establish a relationship with the Christian faith after a breakup, divorce, or abuse.
In the emotional ruins of grief and despair that follow domestic abuse, a spouse’s betrayal, or the life-altering changes after a divorce, a Christian woman might not only struggle with physical loneliness, but feelings of spiritual abandonment as well. It is this challenge that Viner’s debut book, part inspirational, part self-help resource, attempts to address, positing that rediscovering the connection to one’s faith in God must be done in tandem with emotional healing. Its eight-week guide to confronting the fallout of toxic relationships focuses on prayer, employing biblical scripture and parables to assist women in assessing their feelings of brokenness, revealing the deceptions of loved ones and abusers, finding the courage to face these hard truths while rejecting rationalizations, and ultimately living through the gifts and assistance found in an attentive relationship with God. Such reflection is encouraged through mindfulness fostered by daily journaling and creating personal prayers to help individuals not only face the anguish of loss, but also the fear that contributes to and follows it. Primarily a secular Christian resource for women, the book does not stray from the aid that psychology can provide in recognizing the cycles of abuse, though it is somewhat frustrating to see it fail to utilize a more common vocabulary in discussions of the subject—for example, each time the work describes the long-recognized concept of gaslighting, it never names it as such. While its focus is on God’s role in healing, the manual also cites other self-help resources from authors such as Gregory Yantz, Sandra D. Wilson, Warren W. Weirsbe, and many more, detailing each in the bibliography for further reading. In addition, discussion questions ensure the volume itself has some longevity. Statistics from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence are included and so is a great deal of worthy information on contacting resources such as the National Domestic Violence Hotline and programs like The Rave project for those in imminent danger.
Though a standard inspiration-meets–self-help book, it provides some useful advice for Christian women facing serious challenges.Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-8057-4
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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