A uniquely poetic memoir with dark humor and profound insights.
A North Carolina woman reexamines her life after being diagnosed with a terminal illness in this memoir.
“Everything was fine. And then everything went to shit within twenty minutes,” Samples (English/Appalachian State Univ.; A Mad Girl’s Love Song, 2016, etc.) writes of a fateful leg seizure at the age of 36 that ended with her in the hospital, diagnosed with brain cancer. Before that, she was enjoying her life teaching and writing and being part of a roller derby team. Her medical dramas revolved around Type 1 diabetes and her love-hate relationship with her endocrinologist. But now everything changed; as she puts it, “Diabetes is a slow, drawn-out death; cancer is a quick blow.” She writes in percussive sentences that jump from her diagnosis and treatment to moments further in the past and other stray thoughts. She muses on the secret sex lives of her nurses and reevaluates relationships as a parade of friends, family, and exes come to visit her. She dwells most notably on Chole (pronounced “Cole”) the “narcissistic sociopath” with whom she had a tumultuous relationship. She tells of Uber drivers who offered to pray for her, her partying sister who sent her drunken texts about conspiracy theories, and how she spoke directly to her own brain tumor, asking for its opinion on the life that it might be cutting short. “This is not a Tuesday with Morrie,” she writes, speaking to the existential weight and poetic form of her writing. At times, Samples repeats simple sentence structures over and over, like a record that has broken, but she marries this with short, smoothly written vignettes that manage to be frightening, sad, and humorous all at once. At one point, for example, a nurse confuses her asymmetrical haircut for brain-surgery prep gone wrong. Samples also bravely commits to paper her darkest thoughts about dying and the most humiliating physical moments of her illness. Overall, her memoir perfectly reflects the chaos of her experience, but she guides readers through it by staying true to her belief that “honest writing is good writing.”
A uniquely poetic memoir with dark humor and profound insights.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947041-24-0
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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