An earnest but overly dense collection of thoughts, meditations, and journal exercises.
Alternative health care practitioner Torok offers a robust and spiritual approach to letting go of resentments.
The author writes that she had a tough early life, as she was adopted into a family “where anger led the way.” However, she says that she was comforted by an inner voice reminding her she “was not a bad person.” As an adult, she received guidance from spirits whom she calls “Angels.” Eventually, she says, the messages she received from “the other side of the veil” became too intense, and she asked the Angels to stop contacting her; she writes that they did. She had a varied career, including time as a University of Alabama professor and as a dancer on tour with the famed Rockettes in New York City. In time, Torok says, she summoned the angels back into her life, and she began to receive guidance on forgiving all those who harmed her in her life. She calls these messengers the “Angels of Forgiveness,” and their missives became what she calls “The 4GiveNess Project,” the topic that makes up the core of this book. Torok approaches the hard task of forgiveness from several angles, and the four parts of the book focus on what she calls the “lower bodies”: the mental body, the etheric (or memory) body, the physical body, and the emotional body. Each part is rich with meditations and journal exercises, with QR codes that lead readers to audio meditations. She appealingly gives readers permission to go at their own pace or to skip around in the book, and her gentle compassion shines through. However, if this book is aimed at a general audience, Torok may have overestimated readers’ familiarity with metaphysical beliefs; she begins the book by talking about a 20-sided quartz crystal in the shape of an icosahedron. Such esoterica could put off readers who might benefit greatly from this book. It also might have been more accessible if it led with the need for forgiveness and the benefits of it and then gradually introduced the more complex elements.
An earnest but overly dense collection of thoughts, meditations, and journal exercises.Pub Date: May 26, 2023
ISBN: 9798988105701
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Eighth Ray
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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