Enlightening and universally relevant, the book shows us how to forgive even when it might be impossible to forget.
A personal and professional odyssey through the nuances of apologies.
When Manhattan journalist and writing professor Shapiro experienced betrayals from a trusted psychotherapist as well as a close female friend, she demanded answers. Devoid of atonement or any type of explanation for their behavior, both were nonchalant and arrogant, which understandably infuriated and flummoxed the author. Though Shapiro was traumatized, she was also inspired to question how others managed unresolved pain. Sharing revealing episodes of personal soul-searching, the author probes the lucrative “Forgiveness Industry,” fronted by gurus touting charities, books, and documentaries as well as agencies who grant professional amnesty to affronted clients on another’s behalf. Shapiro, who teaches at the New School, NYU, and Columbia, journalistically explores themes of forgiveness through a series of stories from a variety of sources, including family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and students—e.g., a 40-something Army wife and a trans man who faced ugly post-transition prejudice. All of these anecdotes demonstrate how certain personalities can easily pardon someone’s wrongdoing while others, as in her situation, experience spitefulness and difficulty moving on with their lives. Shapiro’s analysis is multifaceted, encompassing radically divergent opinions: religious leaders who consider clemency an emotional balm and pious obligation or a “wildly provocative Jungian astrologer” who touts grudge-holding as a protective barrier against perpetual victimhood. The author brings the same blend of wry humor, sharp wit, and knowledgeable authority that she demonstrated in some of her previous memoirs (Unhooked, Lighting Up, Five Men Who Broke My Heart), offering an intimate exploration of grudges, expectations, and remorse. Ultimately, she confesses to a series of personal atonements of her own and provides an appendix of practical solutions, leaving the decision up to readers whether personal apologies are required for true healing or whether unspoken atonement could suffice.
Enlightening and universally relevant, the book shows us how to forgive even when it might be impossible to forget.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5107-6271-8
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Zero gravitas, zero laughs—satisfying only to the most die-hard of Allen fans.
A tired blend of putatively comic stories old and new, and good luck telling them apart.
Once a regular in the New Yorker, from which many of these pieces (the most recent from 2013) are gathered, Allen serves up stories that will make readers long for his Without Feathers heyday. The jokes are thin, the puns obvious and labored unless you crack up at character names such as Al Capon, “a small-time egg baron.” Many stories center on showbiz types, often has-beens struggling to remain relevant or even employed. In that poultry-lashed yarn, for instance, the narrator recounts a “circus geek whose specialty is eating a live chicken” playing before a barnyard of birds, one of whose members, “flapping and squawking uncooperatively, managed to vitiate all pathos.” In one of many creepy moments, Allen’s protagonist describes himself as “a supplicant who has yet to achieve double digits when it comes to bedding the juicy gender,” by way of prelude to a Hollywood carnal encounter featuring “the sleek, white-jacketed Chinese houseboy, Hock Tooey.” A later story hinges on the prospect of an orgy, a bit of shtick fit for 1960s-era Playboy, while another tale that plays on the racist “Confucius Say” trope—see the Chinese houseboy above—is a flat-out embarrassment. The most current reference is to Brad Pitt, who, an impresario hopes, will play opposite to “a hot blond biologist…kind of an Eve Curie but with a great rack” who “wears a tight white lab coat” and “the black bikini underwear she got as a gift from her peers for making the Nobel short list.” One of the book’s rare winning bits involves a man “reincarnated as a lobster” and latching onto Bernie Madoff’s nose. Read the whole thing as an anachronism that belongs on the cutting-room floor circa Love and Death, and you’re on the mark.
Zero gravitas, zero laughs—satisfying only to the most die-hard of Allen fans.Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-956763-29-4
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
