An affecting portrayal of caring for a terminally ill spouse.
A husband’s account of his wife’s courageous battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease—and his joys and sorrows as her primary caregiver.
The inspiration for Lee’s debut memoir began when his wife, Terri, began extensively researching amyotrophic lateral sclerosis after her diagnosis with the disease. Lee met Terri in his native Jamaica in 1988, and the couple, both in their 30s, instantly hit it off. They married in 1990 and had two sons. Their family life was idyllic until Terri began experiencing a strange loss of coordination in her early 40s. Lee carefully maps the 12-year progression of Terri’s ALS—from her dropping things to using a walker to becoming wheelchair-bound. Against doctors’ advice, he refused to put her in a nursing facility. Lee was highly sensitive to his wife’s emotions, and he tried to make her feel attractive, even while he performed medical tasks. Lee also candidly reveals his failings, such as the times he made Terri wait for something she needed while he watched television, and the resulting regret as well as his recognition of his own extreme exhaustion. Throughout it all, his connection with his wife intensified: “It had gotten to the point where I would just know, somehow, exactly what she needed and when. I could literally look at her and feel that her left forearm needed to be rubbed, or that the spot on her head just above her ear needed to be scratched.” He movingly renders his bleakest moments, like the time he caught Terri online researching suicide, and his triumphs, such as helping her alleviate some symptoms with a healthy diet. Terri regained her ability to communicate when the ALS Association loaned her a free DynaVox Eyemax computer, which she also used to say her final goodbyes. The memoir moves quickly, and Lee’s prose is effective and unadorned: “To this day I can’t remember what she wore, or whether she sat or remained standing. I remember only her smile.” Those who are new to ALS may find a chapter on “Health Tips and Observations” helpful.
An affecting portrayal of caring for a terminally ill spouse.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1504325288
Page Count: 236
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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