An unevenly executed but nuanced and deeply human story of devotion.
A mental health professional and children’s book author offers a complex account of caregiving.
In this memoir, Lorraine relates the story of her husband Adam’s traumatic and debilitating brain injury from a car accident and how she found love and support in an unconventional way with a new partner. She tells of her spouse’s prior struggle with depression before his accident and the role that her partner, Michael, played in caring for her spouse later on. (Some names have been changed in this account, according to the author.) Michael’s invaluable assistance, she says, also allowed her to focus on her daughter’s struggle with cancer.The notion of a caregiving spouse’s pursuing an extramarital relationship may be off-putting to some readers, but Lorraine persuasively asks them to withhold judgment as she tells her tale and to look at the whole picture with a sense of compassion. The book includes first-person accounts from Michael and Adam’s friend John as well as poems, songs, photos of letters, a glossary of psychology terms, and the Rancho Los Amigos Cognitive Scale. This is an engagingly written book, for the most part. However, it’s not without its flaws. The perspectives of people other than the author, sprinkled throughout, are helpful but can sometimes be distracting. Lorraine also sometimes goes on tangents that could have been briefer, as in her account of her experience with an unscrupulous professional caregiver. Also, some of the glossary’s terms feel unnecessary; few readers will be unfamiliar with the term grief, for instance.
An unevenly executed but nuanced and deeply human story of devotion.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-56-497288-8
Page Count: 223
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 18, 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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