by Sarah Kowalski ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 17, 2017
An insightful read for single-by-choice mothers interested in alternative therapies.
A debut memoir traces one woman’s pregnancy quest.
Kowalski was accustomed to success: she was a corporate litigator by age 30. As a youngster, she wanted kids of her own but, she writes, “somewhere between my rocket-speed career and my jet-setting, single life, I’d completely lost my resolve to have children.” Shortly into her career, however, she was diagnosed with a repetitive strain injury (called thoracic outlet syndrome) and chronic fatigue, which caused her to leave her job and seek alternative therapies, including Feldenkrais and Qigong. Through these, she met Chris, a Qigong teacher and counselor, and reconsidered what she “wanted to do and be in this world.” A healer, she determined, but also maybe a mother. Thus began her convoluted path to pregnancy. “Meticulous” and “a little crazy when it comes to making decisions,” Kowalski wavered about whether motherhood was for her. She tried online dating: a date-to-mate strategy. She explored sperm donation. She took many fertility tests that showed time was running out. Still, she hesitated, went on retreats, and consulted Chris for guidance. Chris’ advice plays a pivotal role, both in Kowalski’s life and in her book. Through Qigong treatment, he knew (or helped her understand) what she truly wanted, the state of her body at any given time, the best sperm donor, whether to consider egg donation, how to handle her anger, and so on. While this spiritual angle on major life decisions is intriguing, Kowalski’s repeated turns to Chris, and the many quotations of his counsel, tend to discount her own story. But the more descriptive, chronological account of her journey to motherhood may indeed steer women in similar circumstances. Kowalski deftly outlines the processes of monitoring fertility, consulting numerous professionals, choosing and using donated sperm, finding an egg donor, and attempting an egg transfer in clear prose and extensive details. She also hints at the costs involved—all useful information. But while the author proclaims a “passion for women’s reproductive rights,” she does not extend her tale significantly beyond her own experience. Women with fewer resources (financial, professional, spiritual) may find her story misses the mark.
An insightful read for single-by-choice mothers interested in alternative therapies.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63152-272-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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SEEN & HEARD
by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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