by Victoria Garza ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
An achingly vulnerable, elegantly worded meditation on grief and recovery.
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Memory, grief, and self-reflection mingle in debut author Garza’s account of the death of her sibling.
On an initially ordinary day in 1978, the author’s 9-year-old sister, Virginia “Gina” Garza, died in a car accident, along with her cousin Connie, which upended the lives of the author’s tightknit family. Four decades later, the 52-year-old author recounts her experience with survivor’s guilt, dissociation, and spirituality, as she undertook a long journey of reconstructing her own identity without Gina. “A world without memory is a world of the present,” says Garza. “At ten, I pray for only memories because the present is filled with loneliness. At fifteen, I pray that I won't forget what she sounded like….At forty, I give up trying to replace her.” She includes testimonials of various family members alongside her own recollections, which paint a portrait of her sister during her life and the fragmented moments surrounding her sudden demise. Throughout, the author illustrates, in observant, poetic prose, the reverberating effects that grief can have on a life, and the many ways that her family has coped with it, often through Christian faith. Garza links her childhood trauma to other moments of profound loss, such as the dissolution of a toxic relationship and the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks. As she does so, she examines her own protective mechanisms and peels back layers of guilt and sorrow to tenderly uncover revelations about herself. She draws on multiple outside sources, including the work of Rebecca Solnit, the words of Saint Teresa of Ávila, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, to explore how people understand and interact with death, and how they ultimately learn to accept it as a constant companion.
An achingly vulnerable, elegantly worded meditation on grief and recovery.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-6921-9193-4
Page Count: 186
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Jennette McCurdy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 9, 2022
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
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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
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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
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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