by Melissa Davidson ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 25, 2015
A powerful, sometimes surreal memoir about facing grief through faith.
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A grieving mother finds comfort in the notion that her deceased son is, in many ways, still with her.
Davidson’s son, Paul, died while in the military at the age of 20, leaving her with grief, many questions, and the uncanny sense that he was still present in her life. Her debut memoir blurs the line between presence and absence, telling stories of Paul’s childhood and of events immediately following his death. Paul, she says, remained at her side through every difficult moment, and many sentences in this book are addressed directly to him: “Do you remember, Paul,” Davidson asks, “when we first looked at houses in our neighborhood?” She informs him that she knows that he’s still with the family even now: “Two days after you passed over to heaven, your aunt Lauren heard you playing music in her house. You let her know you were there with Grammy Elizabeth.” These added layers of complexity give Davidson’s prose a sense of intimacy, as if one is reading a diary or personal letters. She reminisces about the family’s various houses, the times that Paul played with his brother and cousins, and his many accomplishments in high school. She intimately juxtaposes these happy memories with difficult moments from her life, such as when soldiers arrived to tell her that Paul had died, and when she took a car ride to the funeral wearing a black dress. At times, the lines between happiness and grief become indistinct, and this gives the book an ethereal tone, reinforced by the author’s accounts of Paul’s supernatural visits. She asserts that he came to her and other family members in order to comfort them, answer questions about his death, and show them his new life in heaven. It’s never quite clear how literally readers should take these accounts, but this ambiguity only makes their comforting images more powerful. The book also features pictures from Paul’s childhood, selected poems about him by the author, and passages describing Davidson’s faith in God. Overall, the author has crafted a powerful piece about grief, and although it’s filled with hope, it also brings across the severity and sadness of its subject.
A powerful, sometimes surreal memoir about facing grief through faith.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4917-6888-4
Page Count: 126
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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by Kerry Egan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 25, 2016
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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