A poignant elegy for a beloved mother.
A memoir about a son grieving his dying mother.
Award-winning novelist and short story writer Montemarano chronicles his 79-year-old mother’s last days as she struggled to overcome Covid-19. At the end of 2020, she developed a cough and fever and was quickly hospitalized when her oxygen levels dropped. On Jan. 6, 2021, after an urgent call from his sister, the author left his wife and son in Pennsylvania to drive to Elkhart, Indiana, where his parents and sister lived. Among the books he took with him was e.e. cummings’ 100 Selected Poems, containing the poem that gives Montemarano his title: “if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have / one.” Montemarano took his Bible, as well: “O Lord heal me for my bones are troubled / I am weary with my moaning.” Although he calls his heartbreaking memoir a “not-poem,” he writes in spare verse to reveal in intimate detail his mother’s deteriorating condition; conversations with his sister, who is a nurse, and his mother’s doctors; visits to his father, debilitated by heart disease, diabetes, and obesity; and watching “the Steelers-Browns playoff game” simultaneously with his son. All around him swirled remarks by Covid deniers (“this is just made up by Bill Gates”), anti-maskers, and a president who insists that the virus “is going to disappear.” While their mother remained in a “wait and see / precarious / critical” condition, he and his sister constantly researched treatments online (he includes his desperate search history) and talked to people about what they should do. They were, he writes, “twin sleuths looking for a magical / maybe miraculous / something.” Their mother’s good days made them hopeful; her setbacks, despondent. Finally, a physician gave them incontrovertibly bad news: Her lungs were destroyed. Wearing protective gear, Montemarano and his sister witnessed their mother’s last hours, grateful that, unlike many others, she did not die alone.
A poignant elegy for a beloved mother.Pub Date: July 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-89255-557-4
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Persea Books
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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