Movingly captures the effect one well-loved teenager had on his community.
Debut author Richards’ novel is based on the author’s journey through grief after the loss of her son.
When 16-year-old Tyler died in a car accident in Walled Lake, Mich., on Sept. 21, 2003, the tragedy sent shock waves through his family and his community. His parents and brother suffered the sharpest sense of loss, but as a kind, popular teen, many friends and neighbors felt the weight of his death as well. In the novel, everyone mourns differently—some look for signs that he’s with them in spirit, some cope with their feelings through writing, some speak about him at public functions to honor his memory—and while the pain never disappears completely, his loved ones gradually begin to heal as they draw together in support and affection. Richards spends some time exploring the aftereffects of Tyler’s death from the teen’s perspective as he watches over his grieving loved ones from heaven. The emphasis, however, is primarily on his mother’s mourning process (Tyler watches over her whenever she visits his grave or writes in her journal). The book also includes a large number of letters and poems written about Tyler, and these help diversify the perspective. In one letter, his cousin Megan said, “I promise to continue to tell every person I meet about the wonderful person you were.” His friend Amy wrote a poem: “Goodbye to my friend / There will never be an end / To what you’ve left behind / To the memories, in everyone’s mind.” The notes vary, but each expresses how much Tyler means to whomever wrote it. The people who knew Tyler while he was alive continue to be affected by him after his death. The book describes Tyler as a hardworking athlete with great spirit and an eagerness to help his peers whenever possible; after his death, a scholarship fund is set up in his memory, and the money is awarded to those students who best exhibit his degree of sportsmanship.
Movingly captures the effect one well-loved teenager had on his community.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1460212882
Page Count: 216
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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