A storyteller's account of the gifts of Christian faith.
Coldicutt’s debut is an intriguing mixture of fiction and memoir, beginning with her personal story of being a retired teacher and mother of four who had noticed for many years the sense of peace and happiness her Christian friends seemed to feel in their faith. “[Jesus] seemed so real to them,” she writes, “as if they’d just been talking to Him.” The blessings of the Christian faith revealed themselves to her in 1986: “After years of running my life on MY terms, I gave it to Jesus and asked Him if He would make a better job of it than I had done.” In the ensuing pages of her narrative, Coldicutt reflects often on her life and faith while mixing in fictional characters and scenarios that involve, for example, a teenage girl’s admitting she’s pregnant, a middle-aged couple’s dealing with a rebellious daughter, and an ambitious software executive’s hoping to have a discreet abortion without her husband’s knowledge. She also includes reflections on Gospel narratives, as when she fleshes out the story of Mary telling Joseph that she’s pregnant. Coldicutt nicely puts it: “[Joseph] drew her gently to a rough-hewn bench he was halfway through planing, swept the shavings off it and sat down with her.” Throughout these vignettes, Coldicutt regularly lists questions for discussion or further thought, such as, “Why was it necessary for God Incarnate to be born in a cave, wrapped in a blanket and placed in a rock-hewn manger?” The centerpiece of these inventions is the author’s dramatization of the famous incident in John 4 in which Jesus talks with a Samarian woman at a well and eventually reveals to her that He is, in fact, the Messiah. “Now she understood,” Coldicutt writes. “This bubbling sensation within her, this was the spring he had spoken of.…Things would never be the same.” This sense of immediate personal transformation runs throughout the book and will doubtless make it very inviting reading for the author's target Christian audience.
A passionate and warmly readable mixture of Christian Bible study and autobiography of faith.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Urlink Print & Media, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2020
Did you like this book?
The debut memoir from the pop and fashion star.
Early on, Simpson describes the book she didn’t write: “a motivational manual telling you how to live your best life.” Though having committed to the lucrative deal years before, she “walked away,” fearing any sort of self-help advice she might give would be hypocritical. Outwardly, Simpson was at the peak of her success, with her fashion line generating “one billion dollars in annual sales.” However, anxiety was getting the better of her, and she admits she’d become a “feelings addict,” just needing “enough noise to distract me from the pain I’d been avoiding since childhood. The demons of traumatic abuse that refused to let me sleep at night—Tylenol PM at age twelve, red wine and Ambien as a grown, scared woman. Those same demons who perched on my shoulder, and when they saw a man as dark as them, leaned in to my ear to whisper, ‘Just give him your light. See if it saves him…’ ” On Halloween 2017, Simpson hit rock bottom, and, with the intervention of her devoted friends and husband, began to address her addictions and underlying fears. In this readable but overlong narrative, the author traces her childhood as a Baptist preacher’s daughter moving 18 times before she “hit fifth grade,” and follows her remarkable rise to fame as a singer. She reveals the psychological trauma resulting from years of sexual abuse by a family friend, experiences that drew her repeatedly into bad relationships with men, most publicly with ex-husband Nick Lachey. Admitting that she was attracted to the validating power of an audience, Simpson analyzes how her failings and triumphs have enabled her to take control of her life, even as she was hounded by the press and various music and movie executives about her weight. Simpson’s memoir contains plenty of personal and professional moments for fans to savor.
An eye-opening glimpse into the attempted self-unmaking of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-289996-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Did you like this book?
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.
GET IT
The former first lady opens up about her early life, her journey to the White House, and the eight history-making years that followed.
It’s not surprising that Obama grew up a rambunctious kid with a stubborn streak and an “I’ll show you” attitude. After all, it takes a special kind of moxie to survive being the first African-American FLOTUS—and not only survive, but thrive. For eight years, we witnessed the adversity the first family had to face, and now we get to read what it was really like growing up in a working-class family on Chicago’s South Side and ending up at the world’s most famous address. As the author amply shows, her can-do attitude was daunted at times by racism, leaving her wondering if she was good enough. Nevertheless, she persisted, graduating from Chicago’s first magnet high school, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, and pursuing careers in law and the nonprofit world. With her characteristic candor and dry wit, she recounts the story of her fateful meeting with her future husband. Once they were officially a couple, her feelings for him turned into a “toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.” But for someone with a “natural resistance to chaos,” being the wife of an ambitious politician was no small feat, and becoming a mother along the way added another layer of complexity. Throw a presidential campaign into the mix, and even the most assured woman could begin to crack under the pressure. Later, adjusting to life in the White House was a formidable challenge for the self-described “control freak”—not to mention the difficulty of sparing their daughters the ugly side of politics and preserving their privacy as much as possible. Through it all, Obama remained determined to serve with grace and help others through initiatives like the White House garden and her campaign to fight childhood obesity. And even though she deems herself “not a political person,” she shares frank thoughts about the 2016 election.
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6313-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2018
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2020 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
