A warmly candid book for dog lovers and anyone affected by cancer.
A veterinary oncologist explores how caring for cancer-stricken animals helped illuminate her own private war with metastatic cancer.
“People always ask me, ‘How can you do what you do?’ They think cancer in animals is too sad to be a full-time job,” writes Alsarraf. “They are surprised to hear me say I experience much more happiness than sadness….I try to give pet parents realistic hope, another summer or perhaps a few years of good quality time. It is an emotionally draining profession, yet it fills me right back up.” One of the author’s stories involves Daisy, a happy-go-lucky, treat-seeking cocker spaniel with lymphoma. Daisy, who went on to live into old age, reiterated the lesson that pets diagnosed with life-threatening disease could still live happily and that humans were the ones who immersed themselves in self-defeating worry about the what ifs they could not control. As she observed Daisy’s devoted family, which also includes an adopted special needs daughter who is unable to speak or eat by mouth, Alsarraf also realized that concerns like losing her hair from chemotherapy were trivial by comparison. Among the more poignant accounts is that of the author’s own dog, Newton, a “mentally challenged” boxer who “provides unconditional love for me and my family.” Regardless of the toll that cancer treatments took on Alsarraf’s body, Newton loved her without judgment. The unexpected—and devastating—discovery that Newton had lymphoma unexpectedly brought her into even closer contact with the mortality she had been fighting against. Rather than impose her desire to beat cancer on Newton’s situation, the author opted to make her dog’s remaining days comfortable rather than increase his time through treatments that might bring him even greater pain. In this wise, often moving narrative, Alsarraf offers useful insight into the meaning of health, wellness, and good living through uplifting stories of animal and human healing.
A warmly candid book for dog lovers and anyone affected by cancer.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-063-21522-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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