An intense depiction of trauma and recovery.
A motivational speaker and businesswoman recounts her journey through sexual abuse, drug addiction, health issues, and more in this memoir.
The only child of an unhappily married World War II widow and a prisoner of war, German-born Spencer-Devlin (The Iceberg Principles, 2013) writes that she was sexually molested by her older stepbrothers at an early age; set up on a date by her own father at age 12, during which she was raped; and became the girlfriend of a local pimp at 16. She experienced some success as a model but then relocated to the United States after an American beau proposed to her, although that marriage soon disintegrated. She spent years struggling with heroin addiction and several relationships, during which she participated in burglaries and spent time as a prostitute and in prison. Eventually settling in California, she started to stabilize her life with the support of church groups and rehab and then founded a successful mailing business with her second husband. After seeking out therapy during a stressful time in this marriage, Spencer-Devlin says she finally fully confronted her childhood abuse and embraced the gay identity she’d long suppressed. She eventually left her husband and pursued long-term lesbian relationships, including with professional golfer Muffin Spencer-Devlin, whom she married. By memoir’s end, she tells of suffering financial losses and dealing with health concerns, including hepatitis C, but she also says that she’s now in a “state of Enlightenment” thanks to her writing. The author, in her first memoir, has written a compelling account of acting-out, addiction, and other self-destructive actions that arose from her early childhood traumas. The fact that the act of writing has served as therapy for her is reflected in this narrative, in which she views the people, places, and events in her life in a cleareyed but also ultimately accepting way. However, Spencer-Devlin’s post-recovery activities, such as her time as a motivational speaker, may be of less interest to some readers; they’re also rather hurriedly addressed here and perhaps may be better developed in a future book. Overall, though, this book is full of insightful testimony.
An intense depiction of trauma and recovery.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5087-0427-0
Page Count: 358
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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