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
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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