A useful, personal tutorial for those caring for ill loved ones.
In this memoir, retired critical care nurse Attwater looks at her marriage and her role as her husband’s devoted caregiver.
The author met her spouse in Sacramento, California, in 1992. She was a 41-year-old registered nurse who’d also opened a yarn and knitting store; Bill Attwater was 53 and the chief counsel for California’s Water Resources Control Board. They came from different backgrounds—hers financially troubled, his well-to-do—and she was initially apprehensive about beginning a relationship with him, but he courted her with joyful enthusiasm; they married after a little more than a year. After several more years, she closed her yarn shop, and later, Bill decided to retire, and the couple purchased a large house on Whidbey Island in Washington state. A few years later, their medical problems began—first hers, then his. She breezes through her account of her own multiple surgeries, although readers do learn that a fractured vertebra from a fall caused constant pain. She’s more specific about Bill’s aneurysm, surgery, and increasing difficulty walking. Although they alternated caring for each other, the physical and mental tolls of arduous island winters left the author depleted and depressed, so they moved back to Sacramento; she writes, “I believe the move saved us both.” The bulk of this memoir/reference guide for caregivers offers a comprehensive depiction of Bill’s gradual but steady decline. The work is written in a staccato, just-the-facts style, spiced with a bit of edginess. Each chapter includes a lesson to aid readers, such as “Trust Each Other for Understanding and Strength When All Around You Appears Chaotic.” Overall, readers will find Attwater to be a knowledgeable guide through complicated medical terminology and confusing health care protocols, which become routine when dealing with long-term illness. She’s clearly an expert on the challenges of being a 24/7 “hypervigilant” caregiver, and she shares many coping tools for helping loved ones safely maintain their personal agency and involvement in critical decision-making; she also aims to help readers protect their own physical and mental well-being.
A useful, personal tutorial for those caring for ill loved ones.Pub Date: April 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63988-328-8
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
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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