A strained tale that may only satisfy diehard polo enthusiasts.
Witnessing a suicide prompts three friends to reevaluate their lives in Elphick’s tale of drive and discovery amid the celebrated world of polo.
Jessica Peters, a 48-year-old flamboyant beauty and onetime polo star, has just jumped off the roof of an eight-story chapel in Claremont, Calif. Burton, Mike and Danny are skateboarding in the church parking lot when they hear the ominous thump. Jessica’s suicide provokes 22-year-old Burton to investigate the familiar woman’s background since he, too, had attempted his own hanging after his father suddenly abandoned him and his mother. The angry, short-fused youngster propels himself into Jessica’s world of high-stakes polo and determines to write a book about the starlet’s fame and downfall. But polo thrusts a spell upon him, and he forfeits everything in favor of the sport. Mike and Danny jump on the life-change bandwagon as well, which leads Danny to a career in firefighting and Mike to live his dream of surfing the waves of Australia. While Elphick ekes out a few treats and surprises, the forced prose and implausible relationships—Burton falls in love instantly with an array of girls, including the dead woman—prevent suspension of disbelief. Contrived dialogue, clichés and intrusive italicized side-thoughts further ruin the experience. The things that do work are Elphick’s surprisingly moving denouement, and some anticipative plot threads, such as uncovering the secret Burton’s father, Reid, has been harboring for many years. The heart of the story surrounds Burton, including his tumultuous relationship with Reid, where each is prone to sudden unnatural outbursts in the course of gentle exchanges, and Burton’s disturbing oedipal obsession with his mother. Polo fans might find more favor, as Elphick based the story on Deborah Couples, the real-life polo champ, who succumbed to depression following her public divorce from her golf pro husband, Fred Couples.
A strained tale that may only satisfy diehard polo enthusiasts.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2007
ISBN: 978-1425984120
Page Count: 497
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.
An analysis of our emotions and the skills required to understand them.
We all have emotions, but how many of us have the vocabulary to accurately describe our experiences or to understand how our emotions affect the way we act? In this guide to help readers with their emotions, Brackett, the founding director of Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, presents a five-step method he calls R.U.L.E.R.: We need to recognize our emotions, understand what has caused them, be able to label them with precise terms and descriptions, know how to safely and effectively express them, and be able to regulate them in productive ways. The author walks readers through each step and provides an intriguing tool to use to help identify a specific emotion. Brackett introduces a four-square grid called a Mood Meter, which allows one to define where an emotion falls based on pleasantness and energy. He also uses four colors for each quadrant: yellow for high pleasantness and high energy, red for low pleasantness and high energy, green for high pleasantness and low energy, and blue for low pleasantness and low energy. The idea is to identify where an emotion lies in this grid in order to put the R.U.L.E.R. method to good use. The author’s research is wide-ranging, and his interweaving of his personal story with the data helps make the book less academic and more accessible to general readers. It’s particularly useful for parents and teachers who want to help children learn to handle difficult emotions so that they can thrive rather than be overwhelmed by them. The author’s system will also find use in the workplace. “Emotions are the most powerful force inside the workplace—as they are in every human endeavor,” writes Brackett. “They influence everything from leadership effectiveness to building and maintaining complex relationships, from innovation to customer relations.”
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-21284-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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