A sentimental but sometimes-undeveloped story about an ongoing fight against cancer.
The debut memoir of a woman with a terminal illness who explores integrative medicine.
In 2019, Maureen Tonge was diagnosed with an inoperable, fast-growing cancerous tumor and given less than a year to live. This aptly titled memoir shows the shift in her thinking from fierce denial that anything was wrong with her to acceptance of her condition. She starts off her account, which she wrote with her twin sister, Kirsten Tonge, with a surprisingly positive assertion: “I am living––in fact thriving––with a brain tumour.” Despite her symptoms, which include a tendency toward overstimulation, fatigue, and digestive issues, she’s remained active and social, and she still exhibits a strong will to live. She tells of how she adopted a unique blend of integrative energetic healing techniques and traditional Western medicine. Along with chemotherapy, she pursued such alternative healing remedies as a keto diet, reiki healing, Kundalini yoga, hydrotherapy, and others. At times, the text feels like an advertisement for the latter techniques, which weren’t covered by health insurance. Importantly, however, Maureen tells of how she made a promise to herself to practice self-care and her determination to never give up. The memoir exhibits an honest and genuine tone throughout. However, it doesn’t always succeed at sharing intimate moments; for instance, Maureen often describes laughing but doesn’t explain why she does so. Indeed, the book often holds back on finer details in favor of general description. But overall, the memoir effectively relates Maureen’s engaging life journey in an account that includes dancing, ice skating, travel to Greece, hiking, walking the dog, skinny-dipping, a Justin Timberlake concert, and even a meeting with Michelle Obama––and she does it with enthusiasm.
A sentimental but sometimes-undeveloped story about an ongoing fight against cancer.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982257-72-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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