Noteworthy mainly due to the remarkable circumstances of Finn’s birth.
The story of a 61-year-old woman who served as the gestational carrier for her grandson.
At the beginning of the book, Connell’s struggles with her fertility don’t seem that unusual. In fact, she isn’t the most sympathetic narrator, as we see her dismiss Western medicine entirely after a single appointment with a gynecologist with a bad bedside manner. After spending two years trying acupuncture and herbal tea in an effort to restart her cycle “naturally,” the author finally consulted a medical professional and eventually became pregnant through in vitro fertilization. When she experienced the devastating loss of her twin boys at 22 weeks gestation, the author thanked the doctors for attempting a risky medical procedure with a small chance of success. After another pregnancy and miscarriage, Connell and her husband began to consider surrogacy. This would be an unremarkable point in the story except for what happened next: The author’s mother, recently retired, offered to act as the surrogate. They accepted, and their second IVF cycle was successful, with Connell’s mother delivering Finn, a healthy baby boy. A life coach by trade, the author tends to emphasize mystical experiences, which are certainly powerful and meaningful. However, though she has more reason than most to be thankful for the extraordinary advances in medical fertility treatments, she never seems to acknowledge that science had a lot more to do with her son’s birth than vision boards and trusting in the “Divine Mother.”
Noteworthy mainly due to the remarkable circumstances of Finn’s birth.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-58005-410-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
