A distinctive voice delivers an entertaining and insightful look at family and mental health.
In Gormley’s memoir, a successful executive returns home to care for her mother and, eventually, herself.
After growing up in Ohio, the author’s career in marketing took her to the heights of the corporate ladder; she had fabulous apartments in glamorous cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, but she also found herself on the edge of a nervous breakdown: “I thought I might get fired. I needed to quit.…My job was not my life, but I couldn’t figure out what my life was without my job.” That sentiment would change in an instant when she received the call informing her that her mother had cancer—only one year after losing her father. Without hesitation, Gormley left her high-powered executive job at Adobe to take on a “grown-up gap year” in which she would care for her mother back in Ohio. As Gormley recounts the year spent taking her mother to doctor’s appointments, each with more depressing diagnoses than the last, she also delves into her own psychological issues. Since she was a child, Gormley strived for “gold stars,” achievements that ranged from straight-A report cards to promotions to obsessive calorie-counting. With the time off of work and the help of some long-distance therapy sessions, Gormley was finally able to confront some of the origins of these issues and even start to prepare for a new life with the handsome cousin of a neighbor, Camillus Musselman. (“Who falls in love when their mother is dying?” she asks herself, but Camillus’ charm was too great to resist.) Gormley soon found herself on a new path that would lead to owning an art gallery in Ohio and continuing the work of “untangling” herself from the memories of her beloved, late mother—which, as she says, is “something I will keep doing for the rest of my life.”
Gormley’s style makes inventive fun of the concise, corporate messaging from her former career; pivotal scenes and emotional revelations become bullet-pointed lists or simple, choppy declarations. It’s a rhythm that feels specific and refreshing, bringing a punchy and enjoyable tone to her heavy subject matter. She also has an eye for peculiar and unexpected details, crafting imagery that stays with readers long after her book is over, including playful descriptions of her boyfriend's wrists (a body part she never expected to be attracted to); the haunting death rattle sound that signaled the ends of both of her parents’ lives; or the sharp contours of her hip bones jutting out of the bath, a marker of her “progress” in staying thin (just one of the many effective ways she conveys an array of powerful emotions around her history with anorexia). No matter the weight of the subject, Gormley maintains a steady sense of humor—she and her mother have hilarious repartee even in the darkest moments, and there are plenty of corporate gags peppered throughout (like her recipe for “Martha-Stewart-Fired-Me Cookies”). This keen eye and quick wit tie the memoir’s different themes, from self-help introspection to family tragedy, together into one cohesive whole.
A distinctive voice delivers an entertaining and insightful look at family and mental health.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798990642508
Page Count: -
Publisher: Salt Creek Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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