A delightfully breezy read about experimentation, often humorous and companionable.
In this debut memoir, a woman devises a plan to yank herself out of a midlife malaise.
Stanfa-Stanley found herself mired in a safe routine as she entered her mid-50s, becoming increasingly discomfited by her lack of spontaneous adventure. Divorced and now an empty-nester, she devised a scheme to shake things up: over the course of a year, she would attempt 52 new activities that would push her to the edge of her personal boundaries, a combination of exhilarating and frightening, what she called an “unbucket list.” The only other criterion of selection would be that her experiences be laughter inducing. The remembrance divides into five seasons of experimentation (summer to summer) and each new endeavor receives its own chapter. Most of the chapters are only a few pages long, and for the most part can be read out of sequence. The list itself is an eclectic one—some of the pursuits are designed to be educational; for example, the author visits a synagogue, a Hindu congregation, and a Baptist church. Others are eccentrically challenging like beekeeping, entering a pizza-eating contest, and going vegan for a week. And there is some travel as well, including a totally unplanned trip to Fort Myers, Florida—the author tasked herself with getting on the first plane to wherever—and a solo trip to Italy. Along the way, Stanfa-Stanley learned a lesson about the value of self-imposed discomfort, and the fortifying effects of testing one’s mettle: “Life is full of hurdles, but the biggest obstacle is our decision to stop at a bump or a crossroad, fearful to move on.” In her quirky account, the author writes with an informal charm and delivers each anecdote almost intimately, like the reader is a trusted friend (“Here’s the thing about belly dancing: You seldom look as sexy as you hoped. Given my middle-aged figure and history of uncoordination, looking sexy was a long shot”). The tone is consistently lighthearted and comedic, and there’s no shortage of opportunities to giggle. But many of the author’s self-directed dares are a bit predictable and less than terrifying: she visited a nude beach, conquered a fear of public speaking, collected donations for the Salvation Army, and watched an evening of horror movies.
A delightfully breezy read about experimentation, often humorous and companionable.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63152-290-1
Page Count: 225
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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