What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir Alice Cohen 2009 |
Alice Eve Cohen draws on her skills as a one-woman show performer and storyteller to write a harrowing, moving, searingly honest memoir about the chaos that took over her settled life at age 44 when, after experiencing health problems and told she was menopausal and infertile, she discovered that she was actually six months pregnant. Nothing goes as planned, and Alice suffers ambivalence, guilt, and crippling depression. As a memoirist, Cohen shares her feelings with spare, unadorned honesty. Can she survive this experience? Can she be a mother to this child? What makes a mother? A good mother? She explores these questions directly, in simple, often poetic prose. Reviewed by Amy Tiemann |
The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion 2005 |
Didion's unflinching account of the sudden loss of her husband (which occurred while their only child was in a coma in a hospital (!)) deserves to be a classic in the genre of books written by and for those who are grieving. It is hard to find books like this, which are both honest but not overly sentimental, not resorting to the tropes which seem to surround death. She doesn't offer vague platitudes or advice. She simply relates her very personal experience, including the inevitable vulnerability, unexpected moments of being blindsided by memories and sudden tears, etc. She covers all the bases, including the kind of insanity that can seize one in the throes of grief, those moments when you forget the person is actually dead, when you turn to speak to him or her as you normally would at a certain part of the day or reach for the phone to share the latest news. It was simply doesn't deviate from communicating, in absolute striking detail, the sense of alienation and disorientation that separates mourners from those who seem to be living "normal" lives. Grief is its own territory, separate from so-called normalcy. In so many ways, it is an illness, an affliction of the spirit and not one that can be cured in any one way. Reviewed by K Corn |
Growing Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables Joan Dye 2010 |
Joan Gussow has been called an "indomitable reclaimer," and here she writes of reclaiming her very self after the death of her husband of 40 years. Growing, Older leads you down many surprising philosophical paths, most of them leading back to her beloved 36-by-100-foot, life-sustaining garden by the ever-flooding Hudson River. We all must discover what will nurture and sustain us in the late decades of life, and Gussow's book offers necessary wisdom, humor and insight for the journey. "Hope is the lesson Nature keeps teaching me," Gussow writes. "She keeps producing. She recovers. She creates beauty out of loss." Reviewed by Barbara Bedway |
Walking Nature Home: A Life's Journey Susan Tweit 2009 |
Susan Tweit is grounded to time and place on this earth by the heavens. Having always loved the stars, in this memoir of faith and courage in the face of a severe illness, an autoimmune disease that some twenty years ago was supposed to kill her in five, she heads each chapter with a short story about the constellations. She also finds courage and faith and grounding in the act of
walking and once took a hike of one hundred miles through a Wyoming wilderness with only a dog for a companion. When you understand how ill she was/is and what a feat it could be for a healthy individual, then you know the courage, the fierceness of will she possessed to endure. She took that "walk" not because she wanted to prove she could, although that might be a side motivation, but to learn to listen, to be aware and in the silence and the sounds of nature, learn more about herself and how to manage her illness. When she and her husband moved to Colorado, they bought an old abandoned industrial property and began to restore it to health, starting with the creek. This is a beautiful story, a well-written story of tenacity and the power of the human spirit. A must read for those who are fighting an illness and for those of us, so far, in good health. Reviewed by E.B. |
I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. Nora Epron 2008 |
Ephron writes about so many of the problems we women face: hairstyles, maintenance routines, raising children, empty nesting, reading glasses, cooking, purses, living in New York City, aging, and the death of good friends. Some of her observations are brutally honest. She talks about how a neck is a telltale sign of aging. "The neck is a dead giveaway. Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth. You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn't have to do that if it had a neck." She has a refreshing list of "What I Wish I'd Known" including "Never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from" and "The empty nest is underrated."
I' m not real big on make-up routines, I wear glasses all the time and love my poker-straight hair. So some of her musings I found funny but didn't necessarily relate. But where Ephron and I see eye to eye is about reading. "Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person." One of my favorite chapters is "On Rapture," about the state of rapture she feels when she discovers a good book. She also lists some books that changed her life. The chapters where she discusses reading are the best in the book. Reviewed Cynthia Robertson |
Manic: A Memoir Terri Cheney 2008 |
The title of this review is borrowed from the title of the biography of Dorothy Parker, a great poet, short story writer and critic. She was perhaps one of the most famous depressives ever to live. She tried to kill herself 3 times and failed every time. Ms. Cheney has her beat. She seems to have tried at least 5 times, and she too, failed every time.
Describing Manic-Depression or Bi-Polar disorder as the DSM-IV calls it, is a challenge. Ms. Cheney does it in a most unique manner. Instead of trying to describe the disorder, the disease, she tells how she lived her life as a manic-depressive. The story is compelling and difficult to put down once the reader starts it. It is about a 4 to 5 hour read and keeps you coming back for more every page. Her presentation is not chronological, but it is pieces of a life, put together in an order that she remembers, not always with total clarity, but with precision of its own right. Her descriptions of how the disease affected her ability to do her job as an entertainment and intellectual property attorney is beautifully interwoven with the horror of the disease that she carried around with her every single day of her life. Reviewed by Jon Linden |
The Woman Said Yes Jessamyn West 1976 |
This memoir left me a bit on the depressed side with it's ending, but on the other hand deserved 5 stars due to the excellent writing that went into the stories. It is actually 2 stories in one. One is about Jessamyn West's own battle to live, and through the help of her mother, Grace, when doctors had given up, she was nursed at home back to health from TB. Her sister, later, years after their mother's death, developed cancer and in the end asked Jessamyn to be with her to her end. Much of the second story, or part, has to do with the plot of suicide, which Jessamyn was aware of and actually assisted in. The act was known to only 3 living people...well, until the book was published. West died in 1984. This story at one point gives hope and encouragement to severely ill people, and than at other times, seemslike it can offer no hope at all but death. But the story is written in a way that you can't put it down. Perhaps it is a book of courage in spite of obstacles. Perhaps it's just a personal tribute by West to her mother and sister and her relationship with thosetwo ladies she loved. It's not all happy and cheery, but it is a book you will remember. Reviewed by Harold Wolf |
The End of Your Life Book Club Will Schwalbe 2012 |
This latest Amazon Vine read had me totally engrossed from its very beginning. Will Schwalbe's mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer - Stage IV cancer that originated in the pancreas and metastasized. While juggling chemo treatments she continues to lead an active life, rarely slowing down for the side effects of her treatment. Although the Schwalbe family was always a family of readers, it is the time Will and his mother spend together as she receives treatment that the two talk about books they read in the past as well as titles they agreed to now read together.
This is one of those books that made me want to highlight important points and be sure to make note of some aspects as I read. One of those is that although this book is about the books that Will and his mother read, it is also a memoir of sorts. Will's mother, Mary Ann, was an amazing woman. She worked outside the home before many other mothers did so and was a great fundraiser and humanitarian. Her most recent quest was building a library in Afghanistan. She was well traveled, volunteering in many dangerous locations, not afraid to get her hands dirty. The pride Will feels for his mother is evident, and I was also amazed by this woman's accomplishments. Although I haven't read more than a few of the books that Schwalbe and his mother read and discuss, that did not detract from the pleasure of reading this book. If anything, it has caused me to add a few more titles to my ever-growing list. Before you begin reading, it is evident that this will not be a happily ever after ending. Yet, The End of Your Life Book Club is not really a sad story. Will Schwalbe is able to show readers the impact of his mother's life. He was also able to show the real and lasting impact her reading had on her and her children and grandchildren. This is a beautiful tribute to the remarkable Mary Ann Schwalbe. Reviewed by Tina Says |
The Still Point of the Turning World Emily Rapp 2013 |
In January of 2011, writer Emily Rapp learned that her infant son Ronan had Tay Sachs, a rare, incurable genetic condition that would claim his life while he was still a baby. Rapp made the choice not to avert her eyes. She dignified her beautiful, singular boy by giving him as full and textured a life as she could, and simultaneously altered the lives of her readers by giving us a live, luminous and heart-breaking record: The Still Point of the Turning World. If you read nothing else, don’t miss this brilliant, harrowing narrative. It's written with five-alarm urgency and honesty so clear it has a vertical dimension, one that leads straight to the core of what it means to be human. As she did in her memoir Poster Child, here Rapp tears up easy ideas about difference, disability, faith, love and loss, excavating experiences and books that have taught her, offended her, shaped her, and saved her. This book will save others, because it gives us back our culture’s most precious stories, re-imagined and often fabulously debunked. Her prose is propulsive, her grief and passion all consuming, her intellectual curiosity insatiable. The book is full of sorrow without being self-pitying, reflective without ever veering narrow, and often shockingly funny, because Rapp is a raucous, brainy, risky writer. She rides grief to its furthest reaches, asking the hardest questions any human being has ever been forced to ask: about how we live with, love, and let each other go. The stakes are astronomical not because Rapp’s situation is so painful, but because her imagination is so original and her way of framing the world is exquisite. The Still Point of the Turning World gives us what life-altering books should: a flash of what we know least and most certainly, that we aren’t here forever, and we can make our – and each other’s - lives matter.
Reviewed by R. DeWoskin |
What Makes Olga Run? Bruce Grierson 2014 |
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Where the Light Gets In Kimberly Williams-Paisley 2017 |
I loved this book for so many reasons: it's candid, loving and a real look at one family's journey with dementia. My Dad was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's and I was concerned about reading this. Would it scare me more than I already am? Would it be a dismal look at what lies ahead?
The answer is yes. I am scared and realize the future isn't rosy. I mourn for what my Dad is going through and losing. This book however, gave me HOPE. Hope that we too will find 'light' wherever we can on this journey with my Dad. We will embrace whatever comes next and move forward as a family, looking for where e light shines in. Helpful resources at the end, as well. Reviwed by Cindy |