A candid, valuable look at infertility.
An exceedingly honest examination of the reality of infertility and the emotionally traumatic experiences involved.
In what is said and left unsaid in Hopewell’s memoir, a clear picture emerges of the emotional effects that infertility has on a couple trying to conceive, as well as how it affects their lives in ways they hadn’t imagined. From descriptions of treatments and procedures to an insightful look at the community within the world of in vitro fertilization patients, a reader looking to learn about IVF or the process of using a donor egg will find many answers here. Hopewell takes the reader through the ordeal chronologically with chapter titles that humorously depict the stages of a harrowing experience. Her honesty illuminates the stark reality of infertility and the many unappealing procedures required to verify it, as well as unglamorous other means to become pregnant, if the woman so chooses. Parallel to the medical aspects is Hopewell’s personal experience: the upsetting conversations with her children about the specifics of adding a new family member and the difficulties she faced in making the decision to use a donor egg. The emotional implications of any pregnancy can be far-reaching—the ostensibly joyous occasion can be colored by any number of complications, as Hopewell frankly describes. Well-written and thoughtful, Hopewell’s memoir sheds a sometimes unflattering light on her life en route to an unconventional pregnancy; her bluntness is to be commended because it may be just what some women in similar circumstances need. Readers will gain a new understanding of how infertility affects one’s family, social circle, career and self-perception.
A candid, valuable look at infertility.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-1936940110
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Epigraph
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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