An unvarnished look at the destructiveness of mental illness, as told by a person who suffered at the hands of someone...
The heavy-hearted memoir of a woman who lost her mother and daughter to the bitter grip of mental illness.
Mental illness not only ravages those who suffer from it; it devastates their families as well. A developmental psychologist, Pruchno (Challenges of an Aging Society, 2007, etc.) is in a unique position to write about living with a person afflicted by a disease of the mind. Her mother committed suicide in 1975 after struggling with manic depression. Then, in a cruel twist of fate, her adopted daughter, Sophie, was eventually diagnosed with three illnesses: ADHD and bipolar and borderline personality disorders. Penned in a vivid, literary style that bleeds anguish, Pruchno’s story is a mother’s worst nightmare—raising a deeply troubled girl whose self-destructive tendencies led to risky sex, drugs and suicidal thoughts, despite efforts to help her. Pruchno recounts in tortuous detail Sophie’s downward spiral and how constant strife and anxiety robbed the family of any sense of normalcy. After Sophie was allegedly raped at age 11 by a camp counselor, her emotional swings carried increasingly dire consequences, including an aborted pregnancy at 16 and hospitalization in a psychiatric unit. The most shocking parts of the book are transcripts of Sophie’s online chats with a man whom she met for sex. While the author’s candor can be suffocating at times, Pruchno believes too many families struggle in secret. She hopes her experiences will spark a national dialogue on the damage mental illness inflicts on families. When Sophie turned 18, the author was forced to let her go to find “rock bottom”—a decision Pruchno intellectually accepted as necessary, though she agonized over the loss of her little girl. Since the book centers on a young person and leaves such a powerful impression, it would make a solid supplementary text for a college psychology course. Pruchno’s feelings of desperation and powerlessness speak more to the reality of mental illness than an academic case study ever could.
An unvarnished look at the destructiveness of mental illness, as told by a person who suffered at the hands of someone else’s demons.Pub Date: March 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4575-2559-9
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Dog Ear
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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