A bit fragmented but may interest twins or those curious about Michael Rockefeller.
Michael Rockefeller’s twin sister describes his death and her healing.
In late 1961, Michael Rockefeller disappeared off the coast of New Guinea. Michael’s father, then Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, and his twin sister, Mary (now Morgan) Rockefeller, joined the search, but he was never found. Two years later, Michael was pronounced legally dead by drowning, but it took decades longer for Rockefeller to accept and grieve her twin’s death. In four roughly chronological parts of her memoir (a reprinted version of a 2012 title), Rockefeller recounts the stages of her “healing journey.” The first two parts, the most cohesive and compelling, describe the events after Michael’s disappearance: Rockefeller’s “numb detachment” from search efforts, her father’s new marriage and, perhaps most tellingly, her mother’s refusal to cry—or to let her cry—over their loss. In this stoic environment, “I closed the door on my grief,” she writes. As good memoirists should, Rockefeller steps beyond herself to raise larger issues: how the women’s movement of the ’60s and ’70s affected her isolation and healing; how psychologists dismissed the power of twinship; whether Rockefeller family dynamics accentuated, even defined, the author’s grief. The third section of the book departs from this style to focus on several days in 1988 when Rockefeller attended a wilderness healing retreat. The intense introspection of these chapters, which include long passages of Rockefeller’s dreams and visions, might frustrate readers intrigued by broader themes in the earlier chapters. Nonetheless, details about how meditation and days alone in nature helped her to finally, symbolically, lay Michael to rest may provide guidance to readers struggling with loss. In the final section, Rockefeller shifts back to more standard memoir style, albeit mixed with psychological theory. She explains the unique qualities of twin bonds and the workings of subconscious imagery, which she now uses in her psychotherapy practice for twinless twins. These last chapters bring welcome (if not perfect) resolution to the author’s journey—and add a touch of self-help for readers still finding their ways.
A bit fragmented but may interest twins or those curious about Michael Rockefeller.Pub Date: April 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497652088
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Open Road Media
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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