Stein’s compelling, sincere voice emerges full strength from this illuminating, soul-searching story of an emotionally...
A novelist and poet explores her role in a destructive relationship.
Jason looked like James Dean in Rebel without a Cause, writes former New Yorker staff member Stein (The Fallback Plan, 2012, etc.), and she fell hard. That’s when the trouble began. In this memoir of loss and yearning, the author chronicles how she had moved on to a successful writing career and a new romance when she learned of Jason’s death in a motorcycle accident. Along with the news came painful memories and unanswered questions. She wondered why their lives were “so inseparably intertwined” and why she “went back to him so many times when his behavior should have kept me way.” They were young and at loose ends, and she had fallen in love with his passion, rebellious nature, and adventurous spirit, ignoring her sense that something was wrong. The warning signs were there: his cruel teasing, deceptions, manipulation, put-downs, and unstable behavior. Her mother, a psychologist, called out Jason’s “ ‘game’ as manipulative and controlling, a way to put [the author] in her place.” Stein never knew who was going to show up: the “charming, hardworking” Jason or the “surprisingly, memorably cruel” Jason. When she agreed to move with him away from family and friends to Albuquerque, the “Land of Enchantment,” it was emblematic of their cinematic dream world: “We had matching leather jackets for when we rode through the desert, two silhouettes against the night.” But the dream faded out, and a quagmire of obsessive love, recklessness, betrayal, and abuse faded in. Stein lost herself in the “heavily medicated fog” of depression, but she eventually garnered strength and courage reading about strong, independent women—e.g., Georgia O’Keeffe—and found her way out through writing. Some of the narrative is disturbing, but the author’s artful writing and intense—occasionally overly intense—self-examination and willingness to expose her vulnerabilities hold sway.
Stein’s compelling, sincere voice emerges full strength from this illuminating, soul-searching story of an emotionally crippling romance.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-98267-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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