A wise companion for life’s challenges.
Guidance for personal growth.
Perry, a British psychotherapist, advice columnist, and author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, draws on her experiences with patients and letter-writers to offer guidance about developing self-awareness to help navigate trials and difficulties. “What I hope this book will do,” she writes, “is help you understand your own early adaptations and belief systems, and be more aware of where they are serving you and where they may need updating.” Recognizing the myriad issues that individuals face, she organizes the book into four sections: how we love, how we argue, how we change, and how we find contentment, which she defines as “being satisfied with your life.” Each chapter includes letters from troubled men and women, which elicit her analyses of behaviors and views that undermine well-being. Overall, she emphasizes understanding and empathy, rather than blame and resentment. “If you look at others’ actions in a positive rather than a negative light,” she counsels, “you can get different meanings from them.” She encourages speaking “in ‘I’ statements, which define your own experience, and not ‘You’ statements, which are a judgment on the other person.” Throughout the book, she punctuates explanations with pithy nuggets she calls “Everyday wisdom.” One example: “If you have to choose between guilt and resentment, choose guilt. You will discover that your world does not fall apart.” Among the issues she discusses are disappointment in love and marriage; frustrations with jobs; isolation and loneliness; stress and anxiety; silencing one’s inner critic; and dealing with loss, grief, and aging. She examines three ways of coping with adversity—thinking, feeling, and doing—and she encourages readers to try to understand another’s perspective, rather than impose their own. In relationships, “to surrender to another person is a risk and an act of love. Surrendering means losing your ego, letting go of controlling behavior, and having faith that what will be, will be.”
A wise companion for life’s challenges.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780306834868
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Hachette Go
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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