by Susan Landers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 14, 2021
Frank, insightful writing about neonatal medicine and being a parent.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
A neonatal intensive care physician describes the demands of her practice and the difficulties of achieving work-life balance in this debut memoir.
For 35 years, Landers took care of premature babies and sick newborns in her medical practice. She tells of growing up in South Carolina and moving to Texas, where she completed her medical training, married, and raised three children. The central focus of this memoir, however, is her daily challenge of providing critical patient care, in which she was regularly required to make life-or-death decisions, while also dealing with the requirements of motherhood. Along the way, Landers details some of her standout cases, altering the names of patients and their parents to protect their identities; she discusses the consequences of maternal heroin addiction, a birth of quintuplets, and her treatment of newborn with a depressed skull fracture. One of her toughest cases, she says, involved “a tiny African American baby born at 27 weeks’ gestation, weighing 480 grams (less than one pound).” After becoming a mother, Landers found that, despite her expertise as a neonatologist, she still had much to learn about living with babies. She candidly describes the ways that she felt that her working life came in conflict with her role as a mother; for example, she writes about the difficulty of breastfeeding and working full time, as well as the dangers of burnout. Landers also considers broader issues, including her views that women approach the medical profession differently than men do.
Landers’ approach to writing is concise and forthright. When describing caring for newly admitted babies on radiant warming beds, for instance, she notes, “This work environment tended to dry out your eyes or burn the top of your head….During long procedures, my contact lenses felt like potato chips, and I found myself drenched in sweat.” It’s a no-nonsense style that effectively highlights the physical and emotional strains of working in a NICU. That said, Landers tends to rely on medical jargon, and although she often provides explanations for lay readers, some passages may be obscure to the uninitiated: “Emily had an isolated intestinal perforation—not necrotizing enterocolitis, a severe bowel inflammatory condition.” The power of this memoir, however, lies in its honesty, as Landers is never afraid to address her own shortcomings. A horrifying incident when she lost patience and slapped her son’s legs repeatedly prompts a revealing discussion of the author’s childhood, in which her father was a “harsh disciplinarian,” and her own determination to avoid providing physical punishment as a parent. At the close of the memoir, the author offers a list of what she considers to be the key characteristics for a career in critical care: “Grit, overachieving, and self-discipline are powerful predictors of a successful practice.” Such observations will prove useful for both new and aspiring physicians, but the memoir as a whole will prove to be illuminating for anyone striving to be a caring and effective parent while pursuing a high-stress career.
Frank, insightful writing about neonatal medicine and being a parent.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63-195450-4
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Jennette McCurdy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 9, 2022
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
15
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
Share your opinion of this book
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.