This is an impassioned, understandably angry and bitter book, which excoriates the liberal West for failing to do anything about the genocide which coThis is an impassioned, understandably angry and bitter book, which excoriates the liberal West for failing to do anything about the genocide which continues in Gaza. It includes both journalistic and memoir elements and presumes the reader to be fully informed about Israel’s military actions against the Palestinian people over the past year and a half. I struggled with El Akkad’s sometimes opaque, sometimes vehement writing, often reading passages multiple times without extracting much meaning. It also struck me that while a great deal remains the same, some of the events and the political responses to them have receded in memory. El Akkad does not provide background detail—historical or political context—for the reader. A polemic was not at all what I had expected. I did not find this to be an informative or illuminating book. I am unable to recommend it....more
“I want you to feel comfortable, even if a lot of this can be uncomfortable. I want you to feel as if we’ve sat together and I’ve told you a story in “I want you to feel comfortable, even if a lot of this can be uncomfortable. I want you to feel as if we’ve sat together and I’ve told you a story in person, sitting across from one another, face to face. There are no fancy words here. This is not literary. I’ve gone through some hard things. You may have gone through some hard things. You may know somebody who has gone through some hard things. I’m still going through them, and you, or somebody you love, might be, too.�
David A. Robertson is a prolific Cree author from Manitoba, Canada. I’ve been aware of him as a writer of children’s and young adult works for some time, but this memoir is my first experience of his work. In an informal, conversational, and often meandering style, All the Little Monsters addresses Robertson’s mental health challenges, primarily with intense anxiety about physical ailments (what used to be known as hypochondria). The not-so-little-monster voices of his thoughts whisper over his shoulder about minor physical symptoms—most generated by anxiety itself. They tell him that death is imminent if he doesn’t take cover.
Robertson has been given an array of psychiatric diagnoses—generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, and panic disorder—conditions that amplify or sometimes morph into each other. He does not state this, but these are all APA DSM (the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) labels based on lists of behavioural symptoms. If I understand correctly, Robertson has been on alprazolam (aka Xanax) for some years—information which I initially found quite concerning. Benzodiazepines are intended to be used for a brief period, not long-term, as they very quickly create physiological dependence. There’s evidence that they’re associated with cognitive issues, as well as mood and substance use disorders when taken long term. Coming off them is widely known to be devilishly difficult. The author is hopeful he’ll be free of this medication one day.
Robertson traces the roots of his anxious state to his childhood experiences and explains that his condition is intimately connected with his indigenous identity. The latter doesn’t figure much in this book, having apparently been addressed in an earlier one, Black Water. This memoir also isn’t strictly chronological. In the first half, time markers are often lacking, and later on there are unexpected shifts back and forth in time, which disrupt the smooth narration of significant events. I found it challenging to understand how the author’s condition progressed and took hold. I think his editor might have helped him eliminate distracting asides and the repetition of ideas. It’s possible that a decision was made to leave the book as is—to reflect how the anxious mind works. Whatever the case, as a reader, I would have liked to see some sections pared down.
Robertson had a nervous breakdown in 2010, and although he points to four classic life stressors (a new job, moving house, the birth of his fourth child, and the publication of his first book), it is a mystery to him how these worked together to create the tidal wave of physical symptoms that had him twice transported to hospital by ambulance for what he’d soon realize were severe panic attacks. A second breakdown occurred in 2020 after his beloved father’s death.
The author writes that as a young child he had difficulty sleeping, would sometimes pad about the house at night, pull aside the curtains to gaze at the stars, attempt to count them, and feel immeasurably small. He also mentions that as a boy he feared being pursued by fiends, particularly in the basement of his grandparents� home. Being overweight and bullied did not help matters when he reached early adolescence.
The accidental death of a popular, well-liked grade-eight classmate seems to have had an outsize impact on his younger self. He writes that after the student’s untimely death, something changed for him: “I was obsessed with my relationship with eternity, due to a fragile mortality. . . I could tumble into forever at any moment. I could get into a car accident on the highway. I could get cancer. I replayed moments of my life where I’d almost died, and wondered why I hadn’t.�
It was the death of his grandfather from ALS in 1998, when Robertson was 21, that appears to have jumpstarted Robertson’s hyper-vigilant scanning of his body, a practice which has continued unabated over the years. For a time, every muscle twitch was perceived as a harbinger of motor neuron disease.
As the above contributing influences make clear, the core problem for Robertson was a deep, pervasive fear of death. Having skimmed the first few chapters of Caroline Crampton’s recent book, A Body Made of Glass, I think it’s possible that clinical hypochondria can grow more easily in a physiologically/genetically susceptible individual who faces a life-threatening health condition. In Caroline Crampton’s case, it was a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma when she was 17, which was followed by years of aggressive therapy. Robertson, too, faced a major health issue beginning when he was roughly the same age.
In his late teens he had been troubled by a racing heart. He made several visits to his primary care physician and was repeatedly—and, to my mind, negligently—dismissed as having some sort of cardiac equivalent of “growing pains�. In his twenties, Robertson found himself in the emergency department of the hospital nearest the field where he’d been playing ultimate frisbee with friends. His heart was clocked at over 200 beats a minute and wouldn’t normalize with standard medical treatment. He required an emergency procedure called cardioversion in which the heart is stopped and then restarted using a defibrillator.
In spite of this episode, Robertson’s doctor—who had already failed to send his patient to a cardiologist to receive appropriate Holter (heart) monitoring—now informed him it’d likely be another two years for his condition to be investigated. At considerable cost, the author’s parents took him to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota where the irregular heart rhythm was diagnosed in two days as supraventricular tachycardia, “a fast and erratic heartbeat that affects the upper chambers of the heart.� An “average, everyday heart,� he informs us, “beats about 60 to 100 times per minute�, but during an SVT episode the beats accelerate to 150 to 220 times a minute. While Robertson would ultimately undergo SVT ablation (in which an extra node sending out additional beats is knocked out), benign but disruptive PVCs (premature ventricular contractions, which cause a sensation of a fluttering or skipped beats) have continued to plague him and regularly provoke psychological distress.
The author attributes some of his debilitating health anxiety to having had his heart problem blown off for years: “Doctors had told me things were normal before when I didn’t think they were, and I had been right—things had not been normal. I was positive . . . that my irregular heartbeat was not from growing pains. It felt dismissive and, frankly, condescending . . . Going forward, due to my experience with SVT, my entire mindset changed significantly. I could not trust doctors. I could only trust myself. I knew my body better than anyone . . . no one knew the right answer but me.� He often thought nonspecific symptoms (e.g., headaches and stomach trouble) pointed to dire diagnoses that medical professionals were missing.
Robertson counsels patients suffering from anxiety to resist the temptation to google symptoms, as a snowball effect is likely to result; anxiety will only ramp up. While I take his point, I question the assertion that “the best rule of thumb is to trust the doctor, trust the pharmacist, trust the psychiatrist. They’ve considered the dangers, the mild side effects, and they’ve decided that those often-small risks are far outweighed by the benefits.� In fact, I am not confident that it is always the case that physicians have adequately assessed the dangers of the medications they prescribe or appropriately inform patients of drug risks. A person can go to his primary care physician, report symptoms of anxiety or depression, and have a script for a psychotropic drug in less than 15 minutes. These are not benign substances. They often have black-box warnings. In some patients, mood can even be further destabilized by the substance that’s supposed to treat it, or patients end up having another drug added to address the side effects of the first. And so it goes. It seems to me that better advice might be for people in mental distress to take an informed, trusted, clear-thinking friend or family member to the doctor’s appointment with them. This person can then insure that inquiries are made about about alternatives to medication and clarify the potential risks of any psychotropic drug being considered. Anxious or depressed people are not in the best shape to take in information or make major decisions that can further impact their mental equilibrium.
Robertson describes how his anxiety has manifested in many situations. Several times he expresses deep regret and sadness about the impact his illness has had on his family. His wife, Jill, has been his rock. She is perhaps the one who first spoke back to the “little monsters�. Seeing her husband in a state of paralysis, she calmly instructed him that she was giving him the shopping list and he was going to the supermarket because the family needed to eat. He did it, and it was a turning point.
A key message that Robertson communicates is the need for community. His psychiatrist, a specialist in health anxiety, put him in group therapy, a move he initially wasn’t too keen on. The other patients all had their idiosyncratic health preoccupations, but the mechanisms were common to all. Robertson mentions the use of exposure therapy (not unlike what is done with those who are phobic). Group members were able to cheer each other on as they made small steps towards freedom from deeply entrenched anxiety-directed behaviour.
Robertson offers many coping strategies to his readers, from breathing techniques to affirmations. My sense is that his book is geared mostly towards a young adult audience. This is, as the review’s opening quotation from Robertson states, not a literary work. It is, however, friendly, warm, and encouraging. I don’t think I was the ideal reader, but I do think the book has the potential to reach young people in need.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for a free digital advanced copy of the book. My review is based on the final published version of the book....more
This is a fine memoir of a Canadian family physician’s personal experience of opioid addiction—in his case, Demerol—well before “the opioid epidemic� This is a fine memoir of a Canadian family physician’s personal experience of opioid addiction—in his case, Demerol—well before “the opioid epidemic� of recent years. It’s informative, brutally honest, and often unsettling—including as it does fairly graphic descriptions of the using of opioids and their effects on the body; in the final pages, it’s also very moving. Drugs, Lies & Docs is not only about Dr. Michael Kaufmann’s substance use disorder, but also about the Ontario Medical Association’s Physician Health Program (PHP). After completing long-term addiction recovery work, Kaufmann became its founding director in 1995 and remained in that position for 22 years until his retirement in 2017. The PHP offers assistance to physicians “at risk of, or suffering from substance use disorders, and/or mental health disorders through prompt intervention, referral to treatment, monitoring and advocacy.�
At the time Kaufmann himself was in crisis, a concerned family physician colleague “referred� him to the PHP’s precursor, known as “DOC� (Doctors on Chemicals). Well, it wasn’t a referral exactly; it was an ultimatum. If Kaufmann, who everyone knew was seriously addicted and heading for a catastrophe, did not phone the DOC program by 3 pm that day, the colleague (who was going to check up on him with DOC personnel at 3:10) would phone Ontario’s provincial physician regulatory body and report him.
Kaufmann effectively intermixes his own story with complementary, logically sequenced segments of a standard presentation he frequently delivered to medical students. In that lecture, the doctor considers the kind of people who typically enter medical school, usually excellent students with a desire to help others. Some of those individuals don’t fare so well down the road. He refers to a 30-year New England Journal of Medicine study comparing a group of medical students to students in other non-medical professions. Over time, those in the physician group were more likely to have poor marriages, use drugs and alcohol regularly, and require psychological counselling. The authors of the study went on to note that “these observations correlated quite closely to poor childhood nurturing experiences in the physician group compared to the non-physicians� and speculated that “some who chose medicine may have done so unconsciously, seeking to help others because they needed to help themselves.� Kaufmann appears to be one of them.
The medical profession, the author notes, is not kind to its own wounded. The wounding starts in medical school. He writes that if you take young people with aptitude and intelligence who lack awareness of their vulnerability and psychological needs, submit them to continuous stress, and then add alcohol or drugs, you have a recipe for trouble. Prospective physicians quickly learn that asking for assistance is a sign of weakness. They develop the “pernicious skill� of making sure their outsides look fine when they don’t feel fine inside. Some never shake the sense of being imposters. In his position as director of the Physician Health Program, Kaufmann would become aware that many physicians do not have personal family doctors and often resort to self-treatment and self-prescribing. Work conditions are not conducive to health. Burnout is high and can lead to physical and psychiatric illness, including drug and alcohol problems.
Through his presentations to medical students, Kaufmann hoped not only to make them aware of their own vulnerabilities as they progressed through their training and career, but also to urge them to intervene, with the support of the PHP, when they noticed a colleague struggling. Statistics collected by the program have shown that action really can save the lives of troubled doctors (and by extension protect their patients from harm). In later chapters of his book, Kaufmann addresses intervention, treatment, monitoring, Twelve Step and other support programs, as well as the matter of a physician’s returning to work.
An estimated ten percent of doctors have a drinking or drug problem, which is pretty much in line with substance use disorder prevalence in the general population. Alcohol is the substance most frequently abused by physicians, with opioids a close second at 30 to 40 percent of cases. Other drugs—including cannabis and cocaine—make up the other few percent. The medical speciality that is over represented in the Physician Health Program is, not surprisingly, anesthesiology. Anesthetists not only have easy access to drugs, but they are also the group most likely to begin by self-injecting.
Unfortunately Kaufmann’s discussion of addiction, now officially known as “substance use disorder�, is based on on the out-of-date American Psychological Association’s DSM IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4th Edition Text Revision) which dates back to 2000, and not the DSM V-TR, which has been in use since 2022. I found some of the material about the spectrum of substance use disorders a bit muddy. From my own research, I see that these disorders are now characterized in the DSM as mild, moderate, or severe. A consistently key concept, however, is dependence. In more severe forms of substance use disorder (what we commonly refer to as “addiction�) a person’s body has made a physical adaptation to a drug or alcohol. The individual requires that substance to function both biologically and psychologically, and the withdrawal symptoms he experiences when deprived of it compel him to seek and use the substance again.
The memoir component of the book begins with Kaufmann’s childhood in Montreal. He was the first son (of three) born to young, emotionally immature secular Jewish parents, whose marriage quickly became dysfunctional. Admittedly atheistic in adulthood, Kaufman nevertheless laments the lack of any sort of spiritual anchor or guidelines in his early life. His was not a warm, loving home into which the children could invite friends. Kaufmann’s father had a variety of jobs—from textile factory worker to lawn maintenance—never hanging on to one for more than a few years. A frustrated, angry, and volatile man, he belted Kaufmann’s younger brothers while mostly leaving Michael, an overachieving student, alone. The boy understood his main role in life was to help his mother feel better: “relieve her depression, loneliness, and gnawing insatiability.� On top of this, addiction ran in the family: his mother regularly used opioids for her frequent migraines and his maternal grandmother was an alcoholic, who died prematurely after mixing alcohol and sedatives and lethally scalding herself in the bath. A genetic predisposition and the dysfunctional dynamics of his family of origin no doubt increased his susceptibility to substance abuse and addiction.
The author writes that he was given cough syrup with codeine as a child, and he clearly recalls an intramuscular injection of an opioid, likely Demerol, when he was 12 before entering the OR for an emergency appendectomy, but it seems to me that the critical turning point was an ER nurse’s providing him with a small cup of cough syrup when he was a medical student. He was ill with a hacking cough, which the opioid in the syrup suppressed, but which, far more significantly and dangerously for him, also caused him to be suffused with warm euphoria within minutes of consumption. The stress and tension of his training simply melted away. Experiencing that sense of ease and wellbeing once, he needed it again and again and again. In time, as he moved through his residency and then joined a family practice, he would find himself rummaging through the clinic’s drug cabinet (well stocked with samples from drug reps), stealing pills from his palliative care patients, and injecting himself with syringes of Demerol pocketed during his shifts in the local hospital’s ER department. About the latter, the medical record would indicate that the opioids had been administered to patients. In fact, those ailing individuals had been injected with harmless saline solution, while the physician walked off with the potent stuff.
As Kaufmann sees it, addiction is “an irreversible, chronic, life-long condition. It can be managed—but it can’t be cured.� In his own life and in the lives of those who have participated in the Physician Health Program, abstinence from alcohol and all potentially addictive substances is the rule; otherwise cross addictions can and often do occur. If a drug is medically indicated, every safeguard must be taken. Supervision and monitoring are critical.
Kaufmann’s book is well written, organized, and edited. Having said that, I believe it is overly long and would have benefited from a judicious trim. Some childhood scenes could easily have been cut, and I wish the author had omitted the description of the slaughter of animals on his and his wife’s hobby farm. Described in bizarrely jolly terms, it adds nothing to the book (but horror) and has no relevance to Kaufmann’s central themes.
On the positive side, I was impressed by the restrained manner in which he handled his wife’s reaction to the disruption, chaos, and pain his addiction brought to her life. I do not know how she remained with him, and I suspect there is quite a story there. I admit to genuine relief that no children were born into what was obviously, for some time, a terrible situation.
I am glad Dr. Kaufmann shared his compelling story. While it won’t be for everyone, it provides valuable insight into addiction and helps the reader understand the how a healer can heal through ongoing support, community, and daily recovery practice....more
Dr. Macauley’s book provides the reader with a real sense of what it’s like to be a paediatric palliative care physician. He presents detaiRating: 2.5
Dr. Macauley’s book provides the reader with a real sense of what it’s like to be a paediatric palliative care physician. He presents detailed but accessible studies of several children with a range diseases—from genetic and neuromuscular conditions to cancer. Alongside the stories of his patients and their parents, he tells his own story, which is an unusual one: he’s trained as both an Episcopalian priest and a physician and has served as a clinical ethicist in a hospital setting. He feels he was drawn to paediatrics because of the abuse he endured in childhood.
This is a heartfelt, brave, and vulnerable work. However, it’s my view that less would have been a great deal more. I believe significant revision, editing, and a general tightening up of the prose could have made this book a much finer one. Mine was an advanced reader copy, and it seemed very much a rough draft. This is particularly true of the sections that concern the author’s own story and the conclusion, where the language is often fuzzy and rambling. The skills of a first-rate editor could have made a huge difference.
Although I found value in Li’s memoir about her autoimmune disease and her persistent efforts to heal herself in unconventional ways, I wouRating: 3.5
Although I found value in Li’s memoir about her autoimmune disease and her persistent efforts to heal herself in unconventional ways, I would have preferred a little less introspection and more specific detail about some of the diagnostics she underwent to determine what was going on. Li, an internist, developed thyroiditis after the birth of her first child. When visiting her parents in Beijing a couple of years later, she had an alarming health crisis. Until it occurred, she didn’t even know she was pregnant with her second daughter, and she would end up having an even rougher go of it this time around. Li was subsequently laid low with severe chronic fatigue syndrome, likely due to the reactivation of latent Epstein-Barr virus.
She documents her efforts to get herself out of bed/off the coach, attend to her sleep, diet, environment, and her soul. Considerable time—a little too much in my view—is spent describing the strain on her marriage and the impact on her intimate life with her husband. I personally don’t feel some of the details she gives needed to be disclosed. I understand, however, that she likely wanted the reader to understand the degree to which the chronic illness of one partner impacts the other. Her husband is presented sympathetically.
Some of the book struck me as—hmm, how shall I describe it?—very California/New Age. I’m quite willing to acknowledge intuition, ways of knowing beyond the Western rational mode; however, Li’s description of attending a grief ritual had me rolling my eyes. I say this as a person, who, when younger, attended an Iron John men’s drumming session with an acquaintance, and had a very similar reaction. Not for me.
Li underwent a dramatic transformation, not only personally, but also professionally. She now practises functional, integrative, and intuitive “slow� medicine, which addresses the whole person and seeks to bring bodily systems into balance, while acknowledging the patient’s family history, emotions, and soul. There is certainly something to be said for a physician who has suffered through and deeply processed her own illness.
There’s a helpful appendix that provides guidance to those who are suffering from autoimmune conditions and chronic fatigue, as well as a lengthy bibliography....more
**spoiler alert** Although very informative, this is not the best biographical work about the Holocaust that I’ve read. So often the personal story of**spoiler alert** Although very informative, this is not the best biographical work about the Holocaust that I’ve read. So often the personal story of the Blumenthal family (which is supposed to be at the book’s centre) seems to be overshadowed by historical detail. A lot of facts are presented here about Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, the remarkable popularity of the Nazi party, the growing antisemitism in the country, Hitler’s annexation of Austria and Sudetenland in 1938, his subsequent takeover of the rest of Czechoslovakia, and his invasion of Poland in 1939, at which point World War II officially began. The Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 are covered, as is Kristallnacht when Jewish businesses were vandalized and looted, and synagogues were burned.
What may be surprising to some readers, as it was to me, is just how few Jews there actually were in Germany at the time Hitler was developing and implementing his racist policies: only 500,000 in a population of 67 million, less than one percent of the citizenry. However, as the author Lila Perl notes, although the Jews were a small minority, they were a highly visible one, holding prominent positions in the professions (law and medicine), the arts, sciences, business, banking, merchandising, and publishing.
Perl presents the story of the Blumenthal family—parents Walter and Ruth and their young children, Albert and Marion—based on interviews with mother and daughter Ruth and Marion (and to a lesser extent, Albert) all three of whom emigrated to the US after the war. The Blumenthals were living in Hoya, Germany—running a family shoe store owned by Walter’s elderly parents—at the time the racist activity officially began in the country. They endured the boycotting of their Jewish business. (Hitler had ordered this nationwide action in April 1933). Walter could see the writing on the wall even then. He wanted to get out of Germany immediately, but his elderly parents couldn’t face the idea of leaving their home and business. Things only got worse, of course.
By the end of 1937, one quarter (130,000) of Germany’s Jews had emigrated, many to Holland, France, England, and the US. Before leaving, they were required to compensate the German government for the “privilege� of leaving. Only in 1938, after Albert and Marion’s grandparents died within a few weeks of each other, was the family able to begin working on getting the appropriate papers for immigrating to the US. This was not an easy task: in the 1920s, the US had tightened its admissions policy, drastically reducing the number of immigrants it would accept from Germany and Austria combined. The family moved from Hoya to Hanover and were notified that they were on the quota list, but it would take a year to get the required visas. It was now November 1938.
The Blumenthal family’s ordeal, it seems to me, is essentially a story of one piece of incredibly bad timing after another. After Kristallnacht, Walter was one of the 30,000 Jewish men rounded up to be sent to concentration camps. He spent 11 days in Buchenwald and was only released on the proviso that he’d be out of the country in three months. The family moved to Holland, thinking they could wait for their visas there. Before leaving, they paid for their passage to the United States on the Dutch Ship Nieuw Amsterdam.
Unlike the Jews who’d left Germany in the early 30s and were able to transfer their businesses and create fairly comfortable lives for themselves in a new country, the Blumenthals (and others like them) who left in the late 30s were homeless and had mostly been stripped of their possessions. They were moved from one crowded refugee centre to another. Because the Dutch Jewish population had exploded from 118,000 in the mid 1930s to 140,000 in 1938, the government set up a permanent refugee camp, Westerbork, which could accommodate 22 German-Jewish families in small self-contained row units. This is where the Blumenthals ended up.
By January 1940, the family had received their American visas and arranged to leave for the US in March 1940, but their sailing was delayed until June 1940 due to the huge demand for passage. Meanwhile, Hitler’s troops were sweeping across Europe—Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Rotterdam, one of the world’s largest seaports, was bombed. The Dutch surrendered. There were no more ocean liners to America, and the Blumenthals were trapped.
In Four Perfect Pebbles, Perl goes on to provide an account of the family’s four years in Westerbork, which underwent rapid transformation. The Dutch government added barracks to the family units already there. Each new building was designed to accommodate 300 people. Soon double that number would be filling those spaces. In 1942, what had once been a refugee camp for families turned into a filthy, crowded Nazi transit camp with watch towers. It was supervised by police and became a stop en route to concentration and extermination camps. Over the next two years, 100,000 Jews would be shipped from Westerbork to the most notorious of the Nazi camps�60,000 of them to Auschwitz alone.
While In Westerbork, Walter Blumenthal heard about and applied to an International Red Cross programme in which Jews being held by the Germans could be exchanged for German prisoners of war. They’d then be sent to Palestine. Alas, the train that was supposed to be taking the Blumenthals to a camp in Celle, Germany (where the exchange was to occur) ended up carrying them to Bergen Belsen instead. The family was placed in a subcamp, called Sternlager (Star camp), ostensibly for Jews awaiting exchange with German POWs. The Blumenthals� names were never called. When Walter attempted to inquire about their status, given that he had all the necessary paperwork, he was struck by a German officer. Of the 1100 Jews sent to Bergen Belsen for exchange, only 221 would make it to Palestine.
I think it’s possible to argue that Bergen Belsen was one of the most horrific parts of the Blumenthals� experience. After D-day in June 1944, as Russians began to close in from the east, the SS began driving prisoners into the interior of Germany. Over 3600 additional women were crammed into Bergen Belsen. In the winter of 1944-1945, the cold was intense and food was scarce; the only things that thrived were the lice. In addition to exposure and dysentery, there was lice-borne typhus, and the death toll mounted. Days after Marion received a serious burn to her leg (from boiling soup)—a wound which subsequently became seriously infected—the Blumenthals found themselves in the last group to be evacuated by train from Bergen Belsen.
This train—crammed with people suffering from typhus, diarrhea, TB, and pleurisy —was strafed by the Allies� planes. It finally came a full stop after a week. The passengers were liberated close to the village of Tröbitz, and they moved into abandoned farmhouses. They were quarantined for two months until the typhus epidemic was over. At this point, Ruth weighed 74 lbs and ten-and-a-half year old Marion weighed 35 lbs. The girl’s infected leg was treated with penicillin at a Russian military hospital. The typhus deaths appeared to be in decline when a sudden second wave crashed upon them. It claimed Walter, who had to be buried by his young son. A mere day after that, the former prisoners learned they were to be repatriated. Stateless, the three remaining Blumenthals were to be returned to Holland.
The final chapters of Perl’s book focus on Ruth’s efforts to get her bearings and make decisions for her family’s future. Initially, she planned for the family to emigrate to Palestine, but in the end, the three were able to use their boat tickets from ten years before to sail to America. It was, of course, too late for Walter. Initially they were in Hoboken, New Jersey, but they ended up settling in Peoria, Illinois. And so began the challenge of a new life.
Before closing, I want to comment on the title of this book. While her parents were at work in Bergen Belsen, Marion spent her time fixated on finding four pebbles of roughly the same size. These would somehow ensure that her family would remain whole, endure Bergen Belsen, and maybe even survive every attempt by the Nazis to destroy them and other Jews.
As I mentioned, this is not the best account of the Holocaust I have read, mainly because I feel the personal voices are often lost among the facts. Even so, it’s a valuable contribution to the body of literature on the subject. I’m unaware of other biographies that provide detailed documentation about life in Westerbork, and I’ve encountered only two that concern a family’s remaining together for the duration of this terrible period.
In the introduction to his outstanding Holocaust memoir for young people, author and illustrator Isaac Millman (born Isaac Sztrymfan) states that apprIn the introduction to his outstanding Holocaust memoir for young people, author and illustrator Isaac Millman (born Isaac Sztrymfan) states that approximately 1,200,000 Jewish children were deported and murderd by the Nazis and their collaborators. Almost all children who managed to survive had been sent into hiding, sometimes in convents and monasteries, other times on the farms or in the homes of non-Jewish families. Millman doesn’t provide an estimate of the number of Jewish hidden children, and, as I discovered, it’s very hard to find out. A website for middle and high school teachers, Echoes & Reflections, estimates that “tens of thousands [of Jewish children] were rescued during the Holocaust by non-Jewish people.� But how many tens of thousands, exactly? . . . What we do know is that Isaac was one of them. In his case an entirely fortuitous—even miraculous—encounter in Paris with an older Jewish woman, a grandmother originally from Poland, would make all the difference.
Millman’s book is well-organized and accessible to older children and young adults. The chapters are short and chronologically ordered. Typically, the reader gets two chapters at a time followed by a spread of images which provides a visual summary of the preceding pages. Most images are wonderful illustrations—some truly poignant� rendered from memory, with a few photos included as well.
The memoir begins with the author’s early life in Paris before the war. Isaac’s parents were immigrants from Poland, who appear to have left Eastern Europe for political reasons. The author’s father, Moishé, an idealistic communist, had spent a year in a Polish jail. The appeal of France was that a person didn’t have to hide his politics or identity there. And that was true . . . for a time.
In early childhood, Isaac had a Sunday routine with his beloved Papa, a tailor. The family lived at 60, rue de la Fontaine au Roi in a six-storey building in a Jewish neighbourhood. Their apartment did not have an oven, so on Sunday mornings, Moishé and Isaac took Mama’s chicken to be roasted at the corner bakery. While it cooked, the two socialized with Moishé’s customers and friends at a local café. Like the Strymfmans, everyone present spoke Yiddish. At lunchtime, father and son would pick up the chicken and make their way home for the big midday meal.
In 1940, when Isaac was only seven, the Germans invaded. France quickly surrendered, and the country was divided in two: the German-controlled North Zone (ostensibly run by the Vichy government) and the Free Zone in the South. It wasn’t long before restrictions were imposed on Jews and Moishé began to announce that friends were being arrested. Soon he himself had to report to the police station. He was then sent to an internment camp at Pithiviers, roughly 90 km south of Paris. Isaac and his mother were able to see him only once. Some of the most touching illustrations in the book depict this visit. The last letter received from Moishé was dated June 1942. (view spoiler)[After the war, the author would learn that on June 25, 1942, his father was transported to Auschwitz along with 998 other men between the ages of 31 and 42. Only 51 of that group survived; Moishé was not among them. (hide spoiler)]
For a time Isaac and his mother, Rivelé, remained in the family apartment, but it became increasingly dangerous to do so. The police were regularly coming around, banging on the door. Mother and son often hid in Papa’s workshop.
Rivelé wanted to go south, into the Free Zone, and a friend linked her up with a guide, who, for a fee, would take them and other Jews there. They reached the demarcation line, but were captured before they could cross, and spent some time in prison. Isaac was subsequently separated from his mother; she used what money and jewelry she had to save her son’s life. Taken to a hospital, where the doctors and nurses were evidently engaged in more than medical work, Isaac was instructed to act as though he were sick. He was to stay in bed and or be moved around in a wheelchair. The Germans regularly monitored the hospital.
Eventually, Isaac was returned to Paris to the address of one of his mother’s friends. The frightened woman wouldn’t take him, so the guardian escorting him left him with the concièrge. That woman refused to have a Jew in her house and chased the child onto the street. And then . . . along came someone who spoke to the crying child in the same thickly accented French as his mother. This was Héna, a Polish Jew whose own grandchildren were in hiding. She took Isaac home with her and that made all the difference. She found placements for the boy in the village of Pontault-Combault, roughly 30 km from Paris, where her sister and brother-in-law lived.
The rest of Millman’s book details his time in hiding, including his first terrible placement with the Merciers, a couple looking for some extra income. In their home, he was ill-treated and regularly locked up. When this came to light, he was moved to the house of a Belgian widow, Madame Devolder, who treated him like a son. He was known in the village as Jean Devolder. Another very touching illustration is the one with the caption “Madame Devolder shaves my head and scrubs and washes me.� Such was his sorry condition when he was first brought to her house.
The concluding chapters of the book focus on the town’s liberation by the Americans, Isaac’s time at Les Buissons (a temporary home for Jewish children—orphans or those separated from their families), and his eventual adoption at the age of 15 by the Millmans, an American family.
Throughout his life, Isaac maintained contact with Héna. He ended up marrying her granddaughter! He was also able to visit Mme Devolder. As for his mother: on August 26, 1942, she had been transported from Pithiviers to Auschwitz together with 947 other deportees, 23 of whom survived. Rivelé was not among them, but it was her love in action which started the chain of events that ultimately saved her beloved son.
As the front flap of the book importantly explains, this is a collection of autobiographical poems about the author’s “unstable� family life growing uAs the front flap of the book importantly explains, this is a collection of autobiographical poems about the author’s “unstable� family life growing up, including his parents� divorce, his family’s many moves, and his being forced to constantly change schools, ever “the new boy.� Inside the front and back covers, there are photos of Lee as a boy, his family, his beloved grandmother, and the family’s original modest home in industrial Scranton, Pennsylvania.
The book opens with a poem about the family posing for a photograph with a professional photographer. All is still well. “The five of you,� observes the photographer, “look like birds of a feather nestled together.� Lee’s father “tenderly� holds his mother, with the baby perched on his knee. As the photograph shows, the two boys sit in front of their parents and little sister. Everyone smiles.
Most of the poems that follow are very sad. They concern the family’s move to Newark where Grandma (an immensely loving and stabilizing figure) lives; Lee’s parents� loud and bitter late-night arguments, which the boy can’t help but hear; their divorce; Lee’s loneliness for his dad; and the family’s repeated late-night flights from rented rooms when his father sends no check and his mother can’t pay up. Some of the best poems are ones that point to his mother’s failings without judging or condemning her: her roughness, lack of education, and bigotry, the late nights out at the bar (even on Christmas Eve), and the stream of boyfriends that the siblings are instructed to refer to as “uncles.� Hope finally glimmers in a poem about the time Lee’s teacher defends his wish to become a writer when a classmate mocks him.
While the content of this book is evidently most suitable for middle-school and up, I found the language of many of the poems unsophisticated, simplistic, and even clichéd. (“Someday/ you will understand/ that life can’t flow/ as you always planned.�) Rhyming often seems convenient rather than carefully considered. Furthermore, some of the wording is extremely vague. (“Just/ when/ everything/ seems just fine/ Life/ comes by/ and/ throws/ you/ its line.� Throws you its line? Hmm.(The context in which Hopkins uses these words suggests that life does just the opposite: it upends your plans.) What puzzles me most, though, are the frequent line breaks. There’s often only a single word per line, creating a consistently unpleasant, choppy effect.
This is the only book I’ve ever read by Hopkins himself (who died in 2019), though I’m aware of him as a prolific children’s poetry anthologist. I have no idea how Been to Yesterdays compares to his other personal collections of poems. While a few of the pieces effectively communicate the emotions of a young boy struggling to understand the adult world and trying to cope in very difficult circumstances, many poems feel inconsequential. I’m disinclined to seek out his other work....more
Delphine Horvilleur is a leading figure in France’s Liberal Jewish Movement and one of only five women rabbis in that country. She describes the role Delphine Horvilleur is a leading figure in France’s Liberal Jewish Movement and one of only five women rabbis in that country. She describes the role of a rabbi as being multifaceted. It involves officiating, accompanying, teaching, translating texts, and—significantly—storytelling, communicating so that listeners hearing the story for the first time are provided with “unique keys to unlock the meaning for themselves.� Her book is a collection of eleven stories of loss, mourning, and consolation. The details of some narratives have been altered, but in a few cases families have agreed to faithful-to-reality accounts. Traditional Jewish stories and legends are woven into some of the chapters.
In the book’s opening pages Horvilleur emphasizes the degree to which life and death are inter-braided. They “continually hold hands and dance.� The author was briefly a medical student in Jerusalem and recalls learning in her embryogenesis course that many organs in our body are formed through the death of some of the original constituents. For example, the hand first develops in the shape of a palm. Later, individual fingers appear when the cells that originally joined them undergo apoptosis, programmed cell death. Therefore, the bodies we know are essentially created by the death of elements that once composed them. Cancers, on the other hand, defy death: malignant cells multiply, refuse to die, and turn into tumours.
Horvilleur acknowledges that though life and death are entwined, there are Jewish customs and superstitions to protect people from death, which is envisioned as the angel Azrael, who walks the streets and waits near the homes of those he intends to strike with his sword. One inventive strategy Jewish families use to ward him off is to change the first name of someone who has fallen ill. In her life as a rabbi, the author herself says she has rituals to limit death’s presence in her life. For instance, she never goes straight home after a funeral, but creates a boundary between death and her house by stopping at a shop or café.
The stories of individuals at whose funerals she has officiated form most of the bones of her book; its flesh consists of Jewish traditions and beliefs about death. This is a rich and stimulating work, and while I’ll highlight a few of the individual stories, for the most part I’m going to touch on general points the author makes, as well as on customs that I wasn’t familiar with.
Funerals, Horvilleur writes, are not essentially for the dead, but to assist those left behind in getting through an ordeal and “staying alive�. Honouring the dead, then, is best done by showing concern for the possibility of those who loved them being able to continue. Of one woman’s obsession with planning her funeral down to the last detail, the author notes that such a desire for control is “often tantamount to not wanting to prepare for it [death] . . . refusing to admit what our disappearance signifies: a renunciation of control over what happens to us, an acceptance that life belongs to the living.� The author suggests that funeral rituals should show respect for the wishes of the dead but accommodate the needs of the living. I don’t think she’d disagree with the idea that leaving some things about the ceremony up to the survivors might even be a gift to them.
For me, one of the most compelling stories in the book concerns the death of a child, Isaac, and the eight-year-old brother he’s left behind. Horvilleur has been asked to speak to the boy, and she discovers he’s intensely distressed because he needs to know where to search for his brother. The boy’s parents have confusingly told him that Isaac has gone into the sky, but also that he is to buried. In situations like this, the author says, she sometimes feels envious of colleagues whose religious traditions have the language of reassuring certitude. Judaism does not. The Torah does not speak of life after death; instead, the patriarchs are said to have been “gathered unto their people.� The holy book also rather mysteriously states that the dead descend into Sheol. While this is sometimes defined as the Hebrew underworld, Horvilleur points out that the root of the word “Sheol� means “the question�. She therefore concludes that “after our death, each of us falls into the question and leaves others without an answer.�
According to the author, there are many traces of foreign influences on Jewish thought. So, while the dualist idea of body and soul is absent from the Torah, in later texts rabbis have borrowed elements from Hellenic philosophy, affirming that the body returns to dust but the soul returns to God. Today, Ecclesiastes 12:7 is commonly pronounced at every Jewish burial: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.�
I really loved Horvilleur’s remarks on relevant Hebrew words. Another observation she makes in connection with Isaac’s story is that though we have terms for some who are left behind—widow, widower, and orphan—in most languages there isn’t a word to designate a person who has lost a child. Hebrew has one: “shakol”—a botanical term, which refers to a vine or branch from which the fruit has been harvested.
When a Jew dies, a candle is placed near the body to signify the presence of the soul and the brightness of the life that has gone. The body is washed and dressed in a white tunic, representing the garment worn by the high priest in the Temple of Jerusalem 2000 years ago, then placed in a shroud which is completely sewn up at the extremities to seal the deceased’s departure. On the day of his or her burial, each person is treated as a high priest.
Horvilleur suggests that the (white-sheeted) form of a ghost is that of a figure whose funeral vestments were incompletely sewn or not stitched up at all. The phantom has not able to leave the world, but has partially slipped out of its shroud. The Hebrew term for ghost is “rouach refaim�, which means “released spirit�.
Flowers and wreaths are usually absent at Jewish funerals. There is a strong sense that death is not meant to be embellished or made the object of fascination. Likewise, the ceremony itself is to be sober and minimalist. In Jewish culture, cremation is strictly forbidden, as it is regarded as “an act of extreme violence� and disrespect to the remains of the dead, which are to be returned to the earth. The dispersal of ashes deprives those left behind of a necessary gathering place. Horvilleur says that while Orthodox rabbis categorically refuse to officiate at ceremonies for those who choose cremation, liberal rabbis like herself will sometimes consent if they are aware that the family had a serious discussion about the matter (seemingly before the death of the loved one). When families visit the graves of their dead, they do not place flowers but small emblematic stones. Long ago, the dead were buried at roadsides or in fields; the stones marked tomb sites for travellers. The tradition of laying stones on graves—as symbols of the strength of memory—has persisted.
Besides the stories I’ve already mentioned about Isaac’s brother and the funeral-obsessed woman (view spoiler)[ whose daughter ended up holding a funeral for her in life, ending the woman’s perseveration on the matter (hide spoiler)] the author tells about the lives of some Holocaust survivors (including the famous French health minister Simone Veil, the celebrated screen writer Marceline Loridan, and the author’s own grandmother, Sarah). She writes about an atheist psychoanalyst/writer killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack, her own dear friend (who died young of a brain tumour), and even about the Hebrew prophet Moses. The 1994 Hebron massacre and the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin are also addressed. Not surprisingly perhaps, Horvilleur weighs in on the Jewish understanding of the nature of God, secularism and political themes, including the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. It should be noted, though, that this work predates the current conflict.
I got a great deal out of this fascinating book. However, I occasionally found some of the author’s explanations opaque. Other times I needed more context. For example, I wondered when and why the author was in Israel. I understand she temporarily embraced Zionism, but the details around these and other things are scant. Even so, I value this book and recommend it to anyone interested in Jewish beliefs, history, and customs or in the subject of death itself....more
I’m afraid I could not get very far in this book, which is written in chafingly broken English, sans articles (definite and indefinite). The prose reaI’m afraid I could not get very far in this book, which is written in chafingly broken English, sans articles (definite and indefinite). The prose reads like speech produced by a robot. It grates. Page after page of this? No thanks. I was not up for the struggle.
Here’s an example of what I mean from the very first page: “Do not stop reading for fear this will be sad. It will not. Not the entire way through. No longer than the duration of moment of event. Sad because of child, and even not being parent, sadness wrought by ill child experienced vividly, is readily accessible, in adult form. Even when not experienced directly as a specific sequence of events within own singular story of life.�
No, I didn’t stop reading because of a fear of sadness, but because I cannot stand reading prose like this.
The publisher’s description of Mary Lou Falcone’s book as “a memoir of love, loss, and Lewy body dementia (LBD)� caught my attention. I was interestedThe publisher’s description of Mary Lou Falcone’s book as “a memoir of love, loss, and Lewy body dementia (LBD)� caught my attention. I was interested in learning about the unique challenges in caring for a partner with a less common and less-known form of dementia than Alzheimer’s, one related to Parkinson’s disease. LBD is the same condition that drove comedian Robin Williams to suicide. Williams had been aware of his Parkinson’s diagnosis—he had the classic shuffling gait, a tremor in his left hand, and the characteristic “Parkinsonian mask,� which made his face appear blank and emotionless due to lack of control of facial muscles. However, only an autopsy would explain the psychiatric symptoms he experienced: the significant anxiety, visual hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia. Lewy bodies (abnormal clumps of protein that develop inside nerve cells affected by Parkinson's disease) were widespread in Williams’s brain, and they were particularly evident in the region of the amygdalae, the brain’s major emotional processing centres. Falcone’s husband, Nicky Zann, a versatile and charismatic artist who died of the condition in 2020, had some (but not all) of the same symptoms as Williams. In Zann’s case, a definitive diagnosis did not require an autopsy, but it certainly took time.
I was disappointed that Falcone’s book was so taken up with content other than her experience with LBD. In fact, the author only addresses her husband’s condition in the last third of the memoir. A dynamic and high-powered performing-arts publicist who in her heyday represented several big-name classical musicians and opera stars, Falcone appears to have been more committed here to providing a record of her own development, family history, and accomplishments. The publisher’s description mentions that friends and family “share� their perspectives on her resilience in the book, but that isn’t true. What the reader actually gets is chapter after chapter from the perspective of one person or another in Falcone’s life. Most are hymns of praise to her talents. The glowing testimonies from family members, teachers, friends, and famous performing artists highlight her superior communication skills, caring, ingenuity, loyalty, and integrity. These accounts are not “shared”—i.e., actually written—by the author’s friends and family at all, but rather by Falcone herself. I don’t consider that sharing. To give an example: the author adopts the point of view of her long-dead father who reflects on the unfair demands placed on his eldest child. He had experienced a catastrophic stroke in his thirties. It upended the lives of the Falcone family, forcing Mary Lou’s mother to take on three jobs and the ten-year-old girl to assume some heavy responsibilities. The major one was undertaking daily speech therapy with her dad. (This was a futile task given the degree to which Mr. Falcone’s speech centres had been ravaged.) Since the stroke left her dad disabled and unable to communicate verbally, an account from his point of view, along with the cliché-ridden and sometimes saccharine “recollections� of others who died long before this memoir was even written, appear to be what Falcone imagines these people might have been thinking about her. Perhaps they’re based on compliments she received. The impressions are unfailingly positive and flattering, and while they give the reader a sense of the author’s character and achievements, they have little to do with the purported subject of the book: providing care for a family member with Lewy body dementia. I have no particular interest in the world of classical music or opera—and even less in the career trajectory of a publicist!—so this book really missed the mark for me. As for the taking on of the personae of others in order to praise oneself: I’ve never before seen such an approach in a memoir, and I hope I never encounter it again. I found it jarring, forced, false, strange, and off-putting.
What I can say in the book’s favour is that it is attractively designed and decorated with Nicky Zann’s distinctive and stylish art. Additionally, the last few chapters finally fairly effectively address LBD, which I thought was supposed to be the memoir’s actual focus.
In his mid-seventies, Zann’s initial LBD symptoms were non-specific. They included forgetfulness, fatigue, and some erratic behaviour. Zann was discovered to have coronary artery disease, and there was some hope that triple bypass surgery would provide a remedy. It did not. After the surgery he experienced severe hallucinations. It was convenient to blame these on anesthesia, but over the next 12 months Falcone noted a slew of other complaints: hand tremors (while awake and asleep), dreams that seemed real, halting and erratic speech, high levels of anxiety, and inordinate amounts of time required to complete simple tasks. Writing a cheque, for example, took 20 minutes. Four months after Zann received his diagnosis of Lewy body dementia with Parkinsonian aspects (in 2019), it was taking him two hours to shower and dress. In time, auditory and visual hallucinations increased. Zann heard faucets producing voices and pillows emitting music. Falls increased, as did hours spent sleeping. Bowel control and appetite declined.
Falcone emphasizes that no two cases of the condition are alike and that LBD is often misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or a psychiatric disorder. Her best, but perhaps least surprising, piece of advice is for caregivers to link up with a dedicated support network. Given the variability of the symptoms, what emerges from this book is that those who care for such patients need to be observant, flexible, and adaptable. One thing Falcone is brave and frank enough to comment on is the sexuality of LBD patients. She is clear that she had limits in this area and Nicky had what amounts to telephone sex with some old flame to satisfy very real needs.
In the end, I Didn’t See It Coming shed some light on a condition I wasn’t well acquainted with. However, I’m doubtful that it’s the best place to start if you want to find out about Lewy body dementia. There’s just way too much other stuff you have to get through first....more
There is nothing really wrong with this book at the sentence level, but I recognize I ought to have paid more attention to its being advertised as colThere is nothing really wrong with this book at the sentence level, but I recognize I ought to have paid more attention to its being advertised as collage-like and fragmentary. I found the content dreary, oppressive, and uninteresting. I was unable to complete it. As far as I did get, the book essentially lacked anything approximating a story. There was nothing to grab me here. I did not like it and I cannot recommend it....more
I’d basically had it with this book when the memoirist’s father, German actor Mathieu Carrière, talked about his dream of making a film in which he anI’d basically had it with this book when the memoirist’s father, German actor Mathieu Carrière, talked about his dream of making a film in which he and his teenage daughter Alice would star as lovers. There would, of course, be a sex scene. Could it become more sordid than that? Well, yes, perhaps it could. The “banality of evil� is the phrase that came to mind once I’d reached that point. I had struggled to find a sympathetic human in the text and realized it wasn’t gonna happen. (Okay, maybe the nanny, but her time on stage was brief.) Alas, there’s just too, too much of Alice and her dysfunction.
Also, contrary to the comments of many, I don’t think the writing is anything special at all. The author is perhaps less interesting than she thinks she is. There’s something flat about the whole endeavour. I question the book’s being published. To what end? Sensationalism? By turns dreary and debauched, this memoir could not and in fact did not end soon enough for me. I simply stopped at the one-third point. Two hundred more pages seemed like unnecessary torture. Cannot recommend....more
Tinderbox is an interesting and sometimes powerful memoir about a white couple’s adoption of not one but three troubled children. Each of the AlsuTinderbox is an interesting and sometimes powerful memoir about a white couple’s adoption of not one but three troubled children. Each of the Alsup daughters had some degree of Black ancestry, and two were ultimately identified as having fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Those diagnoses were a long time coming.
Author Lynn Alsup, a social worker, documents the multiple approaches/modalities/therapies that were employed with the girls, and she explains how her understanding of what was going on with her children evolved. The eldest, a child of Haitian ancestry who was also diagnosed with complex developmental trauma, underwent psychiatric hospitalization and spent extensive time at two residential treatment facilities some distance away from the family home. It’s no understatement to say the Alsup family—Lynn, Jeff, and the kids—went through hell. Home life could be and often was chaotic, stressful, and even violent. “Consequences� for infractions and meltdowns simply did not work.
Parts of this book would likely be valuable and informative for educators, parents, and family physicians—anyone, really, who interacts with children, youth, or troubled adults, for that matter. While I am able to recommend Tinderbox, I do have some major reservations. First of all, it is too long by at least a third. There is an awful lot of padding: unnecessary descriptions of people (especially their clothes and hair), furniture, rooms . . . you name it. There are also play-by-plays of various routine tasks—e.g., cooking, washing dishes, sipping tea, or painting—that are quite tedious to read. I understand that the author practises mindfulness, but I was not terribly interested in reading what she’s mindful about, including quinoa in boiling water or the position of one’s head when one is painting a ceiling.
Where reconstructed conversations (from memory) are concerned, less really is more. This means honing rambling dialogue down to the strong bare bones, something the author seldom does. The same economy is in order when reporting on conferences one has attended. Unless truly noteworthy, a speaker’s opening remarks and announcements about coffee breaks, for example, should not be included.
Finally, I have concerns about the number of pages dedicated to the author’s spirituality. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the subject; I’m just doubtful that most readers interested in fetal alcohol syndrome/fetal alcohol spectrum disorder—i.e., the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on the human brain and behaviour—wish to read quite so much about the author’s Christian/New Age contemplative practice: the retreats, “journaling�, mosaic art, visualizations, meditations, blessing of spaces, and multiple kinds of prayers she performs. On the matter of gratitude specifically: I’m all for it, but a few expressions of thankfulness and appreciation in a book can have more impact than many.
Good stuff can get lost when there’s too much verbiage. It nearly does here. I dearly wish an editor had taken Alsup in hand and urged her to cut large chunks of the manuscript. Tinderbox would have been better for it....more
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