An accessible debut that offers a sure-footed walk down a wide spiritual path.
A young Finlander’s evolving existential crisis inspires a memoir of a spiritual search for meaning.
Early on in Mäkinen’s remembrance, a Hindu monk, whom the author calls “the Laughing Buddha,” crams a book into the teenage author’s bike-pack at a grocery store in the 1990s. The book of Indian philosophy, called The Science of Life, sets him on a path away from the material world, which he always felt was wrong for him. For a few years, hones his punk credentials in various bands, keeping his fiancée, Eija, and his family at arm’s length: “I’ve decided to make art my religion and religion my side hobby,” he writes. He was in college studying graphic arts when he heard a spiritual teacher, “the Swami,” give a talk at a friend’s house. He was inspired enough to follow the Swami to Mendocino County, California, after he invited him to become a monk at the small Audarya monastery. There, the group consisted only of the Swami; his closest student, Vrindaranya; older monk Citta Hari, and now Mäkinen. The author’s new name, Gurunistha, meant “servant with unshakeable faith.” His punk friends back in Finland called him Guru-nisti: nisti is Finnish slang for a heroin addict. There lies the real conflict of the book: Is Mäkinen addicted to materialism or is he attempting to reach an unreachable spiritual goal? The chapters admirably work as set-pieces within the narrative to help answer that question, weaving memories of Mäkinen’s childhood and teen years with monastery challenges. The precise prose is filled with memorable moments, such as Mäkinen’s first night at Audarya, where he says the ghost of his grandmother appeared to help him unpack: “Slowly, I take out another item and another and another until the suitcase is empty and she’s gone.” In a simple but deep way, Mäkinen unpacks his life for readers to see—and they may find, when they get to the end, that they’re inspired to do the same.
An accessible debut that offers a sure-footed walk down a wide spiritual path.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9798988043904
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Opium of the Masses Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The stormy career of a top Navy SEAL hotspur. Commander Marcinko, USN Ret., recently served time at Petersburg Federal Prison for conspiracy to defraud the Navy by overcharging for specialized equipment—the result, he says, of telling off too many admirals. It seems that his ornery and joyous aggression, nurtured by a Czech grandfather in a flinty Pennsylvania mining town, has brought him to grief in peace and to brilliance in war. Serving his first tour in Vietnam in 1966 as an enlisted SEAL expert in underwater demolition, Marcinko returned for a second tour as an officer leading a commando squad he had trained. Here, his accounts of riverine warfare—creeping underwater to Vietcong boats and slipping over their gunwales; raiding VC island strongholds in the South China Sea; steaming up to the Cambodian border to tempt the VC across and being overrun- -are galvanic, detailed, and told with a true craftsman's love. What did he think of the Vietcong? ``The bastards—they were good.'' His battle philosophy? ``...kill my enemy before he has a chance to kill me....Never did I give Charlie an even break.'' After the aborted desert rescue of US hostages in the Tehran embassy, Marcinko was ordered to create SEAL Team Six—a counterterrorist unit with worldwide maritime responsibilities. In 1983, the unit was deployed to Beirut to test the security of the US embassy there. Easily evading the embassy security detail, sleeping Lebanese guards, and the Marines, the SEALs planted enough fake bombs to level the building. When Marcinko spoke to ``a senior American official'' about the problem, the SEAL's blunt security advice was rejected, particularly in respect to car-bomb attacks. Ninety days later, 63 people in the embassy compound were killed by a suicide bomber driving a TNT-filled truck. Profane and asking no quarter: the real nitty-gritty, bloody and authentic. (Eight-page photo insert—not seen.)
Pub Date: March 2, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-70390-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1992
Great fun.
The second installment of childhood recollections (after Opposite the Cross Keys, 1988) by mystery writer S.T. Haymon, who here evokes a sheltered 12-year-old's further encounters with life's earthier side.
Haymon's 1920's, upper-middle-class childhood revolved typically around school, home, loyal servants, and a pair of doting, well-educated parents—until age 12, when her father died and her mother decided to move to London. Refusing to accompany her, the precocious, comically self-confident Sylvia tried to limit this series of upheavals by insisting on remaining in Norfolk in the care of a favorite teacher—except that at the last minute her headmistress (already a sworn enemy) switched houses, arranging for two maiden schoolteachers to put Sylvia up in their house instead. Sylvia knew that the Misses Gosse and Locke were eccentric. What she didn't know was that the skinny, aggressive history teacher and the teary, puppy-like math professor were lesbians. Nor did she notice as Miss Locke's increasingly desperate infatuation with her began to lead the entire household toward destruction. Amusing characters abound—the gardener, Sylvia's only ally, whose faith in the value of a virgin's tips on the horse races led him to pay her for advice; the dour housekeeper who sang opera and downed bottles of gin; the art teacher's model who bewildered Sylvia with talk of "randy old dykes"; and the spiritual channel who informed her that her daddy was watching everything she did from heaven. Haymon's depiction of herself as an unusually clever, frequently petulant, and thoroughly practical young girl obsessed with filling her stomach while all sorts of passionate fireworks exploded around her evokes an era when secrets still existed and scandals were bursting to happen—and makes for slyly humorous, very British entertainment.
Great fun.Pub Date: Dec. 14, 1990
ISBN: 312-04986-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
© 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.
