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THE ACTUAL DANCE

LOVE'S ULTIMATE JOURNEY THROUGH CANCER

A lucid, unexpectedly uplifting, and affecting celebration of love that finds hope in despair.

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A husband’s love for his wife intensifies after she is diagnosed with breast cancer in this memoir.

In 2000, Simon and his wife, Susan, were in their 34th year of marriage, a moment the author describes as “a perfect time of our lives.” That winter, their lives changed indelibly when Susan was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. Simon, having already experienced the death of his mother-in-law at the age of 56 from the same illness, girded himself for the worst. Whereas Susan, then 54, maintained a positive mental attitude, the author fell into depression and at times was afraid he was losing his mind. The memoir charts Susan’s journey, including her mastectomy and aggressive chemotherapy. But the focus is on Simon’s own struggles, describing out-of-body experiences in which he felt he had visited an imaginary ballroom. When his therapist suggested that these experiences brought dignity to a terrible moment, the author recognized his virtual ballroom as a sanctuary. This breakthrough inspired Simon to write and produce a play about his experience of his wife’s illness. The author describes with emotional clarity how uncomfortable procedures, such as administering an injection to Susan, surprisingly became acts of love: “I discover that I can do things I never thought possible and which creates a deep intimacy. Feeling, touching, and noticing are now different from before.” Simon adopts the same candid precision in describing his visions and his bid to understand them: “As I wander around this brilliant ballroom, I am filled with awe. The ballroom sits empty, hollow, pregnant with purpose and readiness. I am the only one here.” Some readers may feel that the author is unnecessarily wordy on occasion: “Wrongness extends beyond the here and now into the eternal, the stuff of primordial creation.” This can be overlooked given Simon’s dazzling eloquence when communicating his deepest fear of losing Susan: “This fear is not just about living alone; the fear is about being alone. The anticipation of losing part of myself will create an existential aloneness in the universe.” Happily, this moving book suggests that people’s fears are not always manifested in reality in quite the way they anticipated.

A lucid, unexpectedly uplifting, and affecting celebration of love that finds hope in despair.

Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-73790-972-9

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Actual Dance LLC

Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2021

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I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED

The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.

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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

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BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME

NOTES ON THE FIRST 150 YEARS IN AMERICA

This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”

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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.

Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”

This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”

Pub Date: July 8, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Spiegel & Grau

Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015

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