An affecting, deeply honest novel; at the same time, a lacerating indictment of our modern health care system.
After a woman’s son-in-law contracts amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, she tries to help the family, but the burdens of caregiving take her relationships to the breaking point.
Kindergarten teacher Colleen Gallagher, 53, is glad to help out when her daughter Sandy’s husband, Tony, gets a fatal diagnosis: ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease. With a newborn, a toddler, a high-pressure job and Tony’s medical procedures to manage, Sandy needs all the help she can get. Colleen is all too familiar with being a young widow left to raise small children on her own; her husband died in a car accident when Sandy was 5. Though Tony’s family and friends start out with optimism and good intentions, tempers are soon frayed and patience worn out by the constant demands of caretaking. Sandy is often angry and resentful; Colleen feels like a slave. In the end, the survivors will have to go on with their lives. MacDonald (co-author: The Quiet Indoor Revolution, 1992) gives an unflinching portrait of dealing with a debilitating chronic illness: the expense, the logistics, the red tape, and especially the brutal, exhausting, undignified truths of nursing: “None of the caregivers’ manuals mentioned the orange shit that oozed out Tony’s rectum only half-way so that I had to dig out the rest as I wiped his butt.” The characters have a maddening way of making things more difficult for themselves; despite Tony’s wealthy parents, all the household DIY chores—scraping plaster, sewing drapes, cleaning gutters—for some reason fall to Colleen. But it’s really health care that doesn’t make sense. Tony’s doctor recommends a life-prolonging feeding tube. Why? “Because doctors love technology. Also, she doesn’t have to live here,” a nurse explains. Commenting on Tony’s feeding chair, she continues, “When I started in this profession, you never would have seen equipment like that in a home. It doesn’t belong here.” MacDonald saves her debut novel from being too didactic by her well-rounded characters and Colleen’s complex, thoughtful responses to the untenable situation.
An affecting, deeply honest novel; at the same time, a lacerating indictment of our modern health care system.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0990715818
Page Count: 318
Publisher: All Things That Matter Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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