This guided tour of “the wrinkly universe inside each child’s head” will fascinate most readers, but some may find themselves lost amid its complexity. In an era in which genes are given most of the credit for shaping our destinies, Eliot, a neuroscientist and mother of three, is especially interested in the other half of the development equation—“neural plasticity,” or, in layperson’s terms, how the brain is literally molded by experience. The book begins with an exhaustive survey of prenatal influences on the brain, including the experience of birth itself, and then takes us through the brain’s maturation, beginning with senses like touch, taste, and smell, which evolve in utero. Then Eliot explores the more gradual development of vision, hearing, motor skills, language, and social/emotional intelligence. Throughout, Eliot emphasizes that the brain operates according to a ruthlessly Darwinian principle: “Use it or lose it.” For most brain functions, Eliot asserts, there is a critical period in which “synapses that are rarely activated—whether because of languages never heard, music never made, sports never played, mountains never seen, love never felt—will wither and die.” Sometimes Eliot’s erudition overwhelms the reader; the book is longer than it needs to be, largely because the author bombards us with information on obscure syndromes and the like. Though Eliot occasionally writes a paragraph that reads like it came from a medical textbook, her prose is generally quite graceful, and her neuroscience-based advice to parents sometimes bucks current trends. She advises, for example, that children should not delay kindergarten, arguing that holding them back stunts rather than aids their natural cognitive development. Eliot also explains, among other things, why young children crave sweets and fats, why preschoolers can’t control themselves, how male and female brains differ, and how a simple “marshmallow test” can help predict later achievement. An engrossing, challenging work that more than answers the question its title raises. (For two other studies of earliest childhood development, see John Bruer, The Myth of the First Three Years, p. 1010, and Alison Gopnik, et al., The Scientist in the Crib, p. 1016.)
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-10274-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.
Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.
At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York.
When advertising executive Schroff answered a child’s request for spare change by inviting him for lunch, she did not expect the encounter to grow into a friendship that would endure into his adulthood. The author recounts how she and Maurice, a promising boy from a drug-addicted family, learned to trust each other. Schroff acknowledges risks—including the possibility of her actions being misconstrued and the tension of crossing socio-economic divides—but does not dwell on the complexities of homelessness or the philosophical problems of altruism. She does not question whether public recognition is beneficial, or whether it is sufficient for the recipient to realize the extent of what has been done. With the assistance of People human-interest writer Tresniowski (Tiger Virtues, 2005, etc.), Schroff adheres to a personal narrative that traces her troubled relationship with her father, her meetings with Maurice and his background, all while avoiding direct parallels, noting that their childhoods differed in severity even if they shared similar emotional voids. With feel-good dramatizations, the story seldom transcends the message that reaching out makes a difference. It is framed in simple terms, from attributing the first meeting to “two people with complicated pasts and fragile dreams” that were “somehow meant to be friends” to the conclusion that love is a driving force. Admirably, Schroff notes that she did not seek a role as a “substitute parent,” and she does not judge Maurice’s mother for her lifestyle. That both main figures experience a few setbacks yet eventually survive is never in question; the story fittingly concludes with an epilogue by Maurice. For readers seeking an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4251-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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