A straightforward, faith-based story of reconstruction in the wake of trauma.
From being confined to a wheelchair to walking on her own, Lockamy recalls her journey of recovery after a near-fatal accident tested her strength and faith.
After dropping off her son at school, Lockamy was hit head-on by a driver in the opposite lane. Her car flipped over another car to land upside down on another vehicle and careen into a brick wall. Trapped in the twisted wreckage, Lockamy floated in and out of consciousness during the rescue process, overhearing that they were running out of time to save her pinned right ankle. Though medics were able to save her lower half, the damage was extensive enough that doctors said she would never walk again. During recovery, Lockamy’s sunny disposition helped her through circumstances that otherwise seemed dismal: legs mangled from the extraction, ankles and lower legs pieced together with rods and screws. Over the course of her recovery, she took literal baby steps until, at the close of the book, she walked on her own, with family and friends as witnesses. Lockamy’s tone strikes a balance between conversational and testimonial, mixing faith-based anecdotes with her mellow sense of humor. Because of her shifted perspective, Lockamy comes to certain realizations about humanity and connectedness: we are all at different points in our own processes of (re)construction, and we can never know whose lives we touch. Throughout the memoir, Lockamy weaves in excerpts from biblical stories she found inspiring: Daniel in the lions’ den and Noah building the Ark. For the most part, these passages testify to deep faith and renewal by focusing on God, but more analysis would better integrate them into the memoir as a whole.
A straightforward, faith-based story of reconstruction in the wake of trauma.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1490855752
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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