A unique record of what it is like to lose everything we think of as ourselves, and to painstakingly reclaim it.
After a brain injury during the delivery of her son, a woman does not recognize her husband or remember having a baby.
“When my neurologist told me that the damage from the strokes had left my brain broken and scattered, when he declared matter-of-factly in his soft, earnest tones that my recovery depended upon me putting it back together as best I could, that there was nothing more the doctors or medicine could do to heal the damage, what he didn’t mention was that some of the pieces were simply gone.” Ali sensed something wrong from the moment she got pregnant. But her doctors saw only a healthy 29-year-old dealing with the anxiety of a first pregnancy. Then, moments after delivery, she went into a coma. When she came out of it five days later, she could no longer even speak English; only the Urdu that had been her first language remained. In short, nonchronological vignettes, Ali attempts to recount what happened from a medical perspective, fill in her life to that point, and chronicle how she recovered her mind and life. She includes reflections on her relationship to her Islamic faith; in the darkest hour, her parents call India to have an imam scale a holy mountain and recite the Qur’an, believed to persuade God to give a second chance. After being released, she is “nearly as helpless as my newborn”—her mother and husband are baby Ishmael’s caregivers for months. She tries to work on an autobiographical novel she has started and, though she doesn’t recognize a word she’s written, does not give up. Though Ali doesn’t name it here, that novel was Madras on Rainy Days (2004), a PEN/Hemingway finalist. Her neurologist, noting that Ali’s is the most dramatic recovery he has ever witnessed, hypothesizes that “the repetitive process of working on a story based on my personal experience” was key. This memoir seems to continue that process. After the halting pace of her recovery, an epilogue jumps ahead five years with dramatic developments the reader is not prepared for.
A unique record of what it is like to lose everything we think of as ourselves, and to painstakingly reclaim it.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781646222612
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.
An author’s trip to Venice takes a distinctly Borgesian turn.
In November 2020, soccer club Venizia F.C. offered Nigerian American author Madu a writing residency as part of its plan “to turn the team into a global entity of fashion, culture, and sports.” Flying to Venice for the fellowship, he felt guilty about leaving his immigrant parents, who were shocked to learn upon moving to the U.S. years earlier that their Nigerian teaching certifications were invalid, forcing his father to work as a stocking clerk at Rite Aid to support the family. Madu’s experiences in Venice are incidental to what is primarily a story about his family, especially his strained relationship with his father, who was disappointed with many of his son’s choices. Unfortunately, the author’s seeming disinterest in Venice renders much of the narrative colorless. He says the trip across the Ponte della Libertà bridge was “magical,” but nothing he describes—the “endless water on both sides,” the nearby seagulls—is particularly remarkable. Little in the text conveys a sense of place or the unique character of his surroundings. Madu is at his best when he focuses on family dynamics and his observations that, in the largely deserted city, “I was one of the few Black people around.” He cites Borges, giving special note to the author’s “The House of Asterion,” in which the minotaur “explains his situation as a creature and as a creature within the labyrinth” of multiple mirrors. This notion leads to the Borgesian turn in the book’s second half, when, in an extended sequence, Madu imagines himself transformed into a minotaur, with “the head of a bull” and his body “larger, thicker, powerful but also cumbersome.” It’s an engaging passage, although stylistically out of keeping with much of what has come before.
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781953368669
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Of most interest to dyed-in-the-wool lovers or haters.
“Not a Cinderella story.”
Baldwin’s loosely written memoir is about motherhood and pregnancy loss, marriage to a celebrity, being the target of gossip and criticism, the experiences of neurodivergency and bilingualism, and more. “When Alec and I met, I was twenty-seven and he was fifty-three,” she writes. “Now, it’s nearly a decade and a half later….People always ask me: What is life actually like with seven kids (and an Alec)? It’s amazing and chaotic.” This book comes on the heels of the first season of the family’s reality show, The Baldwins, seemingly designed to answer the same burning question. While the author seems like a nice, well-meaning person, one comes away from this memoir hoping the television version, with the story sculpted by professionals, is the more entertaining response. Given the fact that there has been controversy about Baldwin’s background, perhaps she should have written a straightforward autobiography. But she has not, and the reader might need to do some research to understand the nature of some of the attacks she writes about. The veracity of her Spanish identity has come under fire, as her birth name is Hilary, she was born in Boston, and is not of Latine descent—but you won’t learn those facts from this book. The author’s relative youth, her choice to have her sixth child via surrogate, and Alec Baldwin’s involvement in the death of a colleague on a film set have all been media fodder. She discusses several specific nemeses without naming them, which is not very interesting. “I grapple with the question: Why am I here in the public space? Why am I ‘relevant’? Am I here because an actor fell in love with me? Am I here because I’m a yoga teacher and have things to say about mental and physical health? Am I here because I had a lot of kids?” It’s not clear that she knows, and neither will you.
Of most interest to dyed-in-the-wool lovers or haters.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781668009987
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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