A painful, uplifting, and beautiful meditation on loss and recovery.
A mother discusses the loss of her daughter to cancer and her own emotional healing in the aftermath.
Debut author Dubois’ oldest daughter, Chantal, began suffering from headaches and blurred vision in 2006, at age 18, which were severe enough to warrant medical attention. Doctors discovered a tumor located at the base of Chantal’s brain, which they determined was inoperable but also benign. However, a second biopsy revealed that the tumor was, in fact, cancerous, and Chantal was diagnosed with a Stage IV astrocytoma. She immediately started chemotherapy, which was followed by radiation therapy, and the author arrestingly recounts the debilitating consequences of those treatments: Chantal gained nearly 50 pounds, lost her hair, and was plagued by chronic lethargy. She eventually rebounded enough to take some college courses, but then her tumor grew larger and a second one appeared, and the author was forced to face the grim reality that her daughter would soon die. Dubois also discusses the range of challenges associated with extreme ill health, including the considerable financial toll; Chantal’s last drug regimen, for example, was not covered by insurance, and the costs were astronomical. In the wake of her daughter’s death, the author groped for some sense of spiritual meaning and developed an interest in the afterlife. Additionally, she immersed herself in volunteer work to help others stricken by similar tragedies; she now serves on the board of directors for the Helping Families Handle Cancer Foundation. Dubois writes with notable clarity, given the nature of the grief she relates; for example, her account of her daughter’s passing is heartbreakingly poignant. She also insightfully reflects on her trauma in a way that should be of particular interest to those who have suffered similarly. For example, she finds that her spiritual quest seemed to offer her some support, if not quite consolation: “I have come to fully accept that Chantal had a purpose here, as we all do and that she had to leave early as her time in the physical world was done. I still experience her presence every once in a while, and I receive signs that she’s with me.”
A painful, uplifting, and beautiful meditation on loss and recovery.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-7920-5
Page Count: 132
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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