An exceptionally well-written memoir offering insights about the darker side of the human psyche.
In his deeply personal memoir, debut author McKinley draws lessons from his brother David’s late-life suicide.
After his older brother’s suicide in 2009, McKinley wondered why his brother did it and why he didn’t succumb to suicide himself. He shares his answers in an illuminating autobiography, delving into his feeling of depression, shame and inadequacy. In Chapter 1, McKinley describes his brother’s disappearance and the family’s realization that it was suicide. He introduces the idea of “the buried man”—as if he and his brother buried the pain of self-loathing. From there, McKinley tells his life story, using Julia Cameron’s technique for healing the inner child from The Vein of Gold (1996). He writes about growing up during the turbulent ’70s in a moderately wealthy family, which slowly dissolved under the pressure of keeping up appearances. Readers learn that McKinley felt unwanted as a child; he believed bad things would happen and withdrew into childhood fantasies. Describing an evening with his parents, he says: “There were times it felt so cold in that living room I half-expected to see my own breath. The scarab scratch of pencil on paper was the only sound. We’d go on this way in silence until the fire died.” He goes on to recount his early adult life, bouncing from job to job, working in LA as a stand-up comedian, and finally settling into marriage, family and a steady career as an English teacher. Yet even into midlife, he admits being buried under suppressed rage and low self-esteem, which he medicated while refurbishing an old home—until something happened: He found a statue of a boy buried in ivy, which becomes the symbol of his life’s new direction. Rather than remaining buried in pain, he discovers the life-saving lessons his brother never learned: We should talk about our problems and ask for help, since we’re all worthy of love. McKinley’s knack for conversational, engaging writing transforms what could have been an ordinary, if tragic, tale of modern life into an intriguing read filled with exceptional insights conveyed without being preachy. Mercifully free of psychobabble, McKinley’s memoir resonates with genuine emotion.
An exceptionally well-written memoir offering insights about the darker side of the human psyche.Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482761290
Page Count: 282
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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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