Not for everyone, but a surprisingly satisfying and ultimately optimistic remembrance.
This memoir by an anonymous debut author recounts the damage that her now-ex-husband’s alcoholism did to her and their son.
“I am a writer,” the author says up front. “Mostly I write a lot of lists, checks, and cutting emails that I never send; but they’re decisively pointed and crushing, I assure you.” Her narrative about her troubled relationship with her ex is filled with her appropriate frustration and rage—a full-on cathartic explosion that simultaneously details the hits that kept on coming and her resolve to rebuild and persevere. Foreclosure, bankruptcy, and nonexistent court-ordered child support payments, she says, were merely the surface damage inflicted by her ex-husband. More distressing, she asserts, was the psychological damage, especially to her young son, who learned too early that disappointment defined his relationship with his father. She now has full custody of their 9-year-old son, following her ex’s numerous DWIs, several stints in rehab, lost jobs, and refusal to admit he had a problem. Still, her child is beginning to thrive, and she sees a path ahead: “We need to do enough and love enough and live enough to make the most of the moments we have.” It should be stated from the get-go that if readers find constant rough language offensive, this book will not suit them; to say it’s salty doesn’t do it justice. But it’s also funny, irreverent, and creatively ironic. The author, who introduces herself as “Sherry,” isn’t only a special education teacher at a New Jersey middle school; she’s also a bartender, and she effectively brings skills from both careers to this memoir. Each chapter begins with a recommended alcoholic beverage to be “paired” with the chapter subject, complete with a recipe. “A child’s suffering is the single most heart-wrenching experience a parent can endure,” Sherry tells readers in the chapter titled “Happy Hour” (suggested pairing: “Pitcher of Pink Sangria”).
Not for everyone, but a surprisingly satisfying and ultimately optimistic remembrance.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5397-0643-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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