by Linda Caine & Robin Royston ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 15, 2004
Psychology buffs will make of this what they will. Either way, it’s an absorbing story and ought to make a chilling movie.
A collaborative record of illness and recovery by an Englishwoman who suffered from severe depression and the psychotherapist who helped her get to the root of her distress.
Caine, to outward appearances a happily married, financially secure wife and mother, first met Jungian psychotherapist Royston in early 1989, when she was referred to him after an alarming suicidal episode. Royston soon placed her in Ticehurst, a mental hospital near her home in Canterbury, to protect her from self-harm and to enable them to have longer sessions together. Both evidently took extensive notes during the years of her treatment, for their account is rather like a joint diary, with alternating passages by each. As a Jungian, Royston looks for clues in Caine’s dreams and interprets them for her as she reveals them over the next couple of years. Caine leaves Ticehurst at various times, sometimes just for a weekend, sometimes for months, but her sessions with Royston do not end until late 1991. Puzzling, fragmentary memories come back to her, and the story of her life gradually unfolds. She was abandoned by her mother at an early age, subsequently raised by her father, suffered an unnecessary mastectomy at age 14, married an abusive man at 17, was widowed at 20, and raped in a particularly horrifying manner shortly afterward. Royston comes to suspect that Caine has been the victim of childhood sexual abuse, and in his mind her father is the prime suspect. When the identity of the dark, menacing stranger in her dreams and flashbacks eventually becomes clear, the doctor hopes that talking about them will release Caine from her misery. In the end, however, it is a group prayer session that rescues and transforms her. Whether her recovered memories are true cannot be known, but Caine clearly believes they are. The same may be said for Royston’s dream interpretations.
Psychology buffs will make of this what they will. Either way, it’s an absorbing story and ought to make a chilling movie.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-593-04734-6
Page Count: 445
Publisher: Transworld UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1945
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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