by Pat Engebrecht ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 6, 2012
Reveals an extraordinarily talented individual who waged an epic struggle and, in her own way, won—for a time.
Engebrecht’s raw account of the invisible ailment that claimed her daughter’s life.
“Tragic” hardly begins to describe the heartbreak of LauraJo’s struggle with borderline personality disorder, which her mother documents with the help of LauraJo’s journal entries, poetry and sketches. On the surface, LauraJo appears so typical that fellow patients in a mental institution wonder why she’s there. Yet her articulate daybook entries are filled with despair and feelings she can’t quite control, sometimes lurking just beneath her observations. “No one could ask or be more thankful for such a glorious day,” LauraJo writes after one outing. “Then darkness fell, the sun was gone and anxiety, doubt and thoughts of suicide returned. I truly believed earlier in the day that I had it licked.” Self-harm becomes an integral part of her life, as other journal entries mention several failed suicide attempts and the quest for something to make rat poison taste good. Decades after her daughter’s death, Engebrecht’s commentary is the voice of a mother who’s accepted that she’ll never have answers for some questions: “Why didn’t I see evidence of your self-abuse earlier?” she wonders. Whether she’s writing about a flash flood that destroyed the family home in mere minutes or LauraJo’s success as a tennis player and her struggles with her sexuality, Engebrecht lays bare the bones of her own life and her daughter’s. Rare technical slips, like the use of “flower” instead of “flour,” are irrelevant in the face of such honesty.
Reveals an extraordinarily talented individual who waged an epic struggle and, in her own way, won—for a time.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2012
ISBN: 9781461185789
Page Count: 320
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Sloane Crosley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 2024
A marvelously tender memoir on suicide and loss.
An essayist and novelist turns her attention to the heartache of a friend’s suicide.
Crosley’s memoir is not only a joy to read, but also a respectful and philosophical work about a colleague’s recent suicide. “All burglaries are alike, but every burglary is uninsured in its own way,” she begins, in reference to the thief who stole the jewelry from her New York apartment in 2019. Among the stolen items was her grandmother’s “green dome cocktail ring with tiers of tourmaline (think kryptonite, think dish soap).” She wrote those words two months after the burglary and “one month since the violent death of my dearest friend.” That friend was Russell Perreault, referred to only by his first name, her boss when she was a publicist at Vintage Books. Russell, who loved “cheap trinkets” from flea markets, had “the timeless charm of a movie star, the competitive edge of a Spartan,” and—one of many marvelous details—a “thatch of salt-and-pepper hair, seemingly scalped from the roof of an English country house.” Over the years, the two became more than boss and subordinate, teasing one another at work, sharing dinners, enjoying “idyllic scenes” at his Connecticut country home, “a modest farmhouse with peeling paint and fragile plumbing…the house that Windex forgot.” It was in the barn at that house that Russell took his own life. Despite the obvious difference in the severity of robbery and suicide, Crosley fashions a sharp narrative that finds commonality in the dislocation brought on by these events. The book is no hagiography—she notes harassment complaints against Russell for thoughtlessly tossed-off comments, plus critiques of the “deeply antiquated and often backward” publishing industry—but the result is a warm remembrance sure to resonate with anyone who has experienced loss.
A marvelously tender memoir on suicide and loss.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780374609849
Page Count: 208
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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