A tragic, cautionary account communicated with tender conviction.
A devoted wife and mother searched for answers when her spouse experienced cognitive issues in this sensitive debut memoir by Bell.
As an MIT graduate working as an executive within the medical device industry, Bell was well accustomed to problem-solving. Yet when her husband, Russ, a computer scientist and electrical engineer, began acting uncharacteristically, immediate answers weren’t forthcoming. The couple’s two children tiptoed around to avoid disturbing their father. Concerns heightened when Russ, a dexterous thinker, struggled to operate the family’s alarm system. Medical tests showed little out of the ordinary, yet Russ’ cognitive functioning continued to decline. After visiting numerous physicians, Bell struggled to believe the diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s. The author’s perseverance led to Russ’ being diagnosed with and treated for chronic Lyme disease. The illness was discovered too late, however, and required residential care. Drawn from journal entries that Bell wrote to “cope with the chaos,” this memoir maintains a powerful sense of urgency. When considering leaving Russ because of his atypical behavior, the author writes: “I left work early to meet the realtor, but doubt surrounded me. Can I do this? I’ve been with him for so long. Can I leave him? Can I raise the kids on my own? Has it come to this?” The stylistic approach is simple and immediate. Bell avoids the choppiness found in many memoirs developed from journals, and her emotions remain honest and thoughtful: “The guilt barraging my conscience eased, and for the first time in a while, I felt free.” Readers may be mistaken in thinking that Bell’s memoir will interest only those whose lives have been affected by Lyme disease. In truth, the book is a passionate cri de coeur that encourages anyone faced with illness to explore beyond “symptomatic diagnoses to find root causes.”
A tragic, cautionary account communicated with tender conviction.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-955711-01-2
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Stonebrook Pub.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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