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All I Can Handle, I’m No Mother Theresa: A Life Raising Three Daughters with Autism by Kim Stagliano
Published by Skyhorse Publishing
If you can’t tell from the title of the book, Kim Stagliano is in the unique and unenviable far more common than I realized and unenviable, to many, position of having three daughters who have autism, a condition which more typically affects boys. This, combined with her husband’s incredibly bad luck with employment - he had a tendency for many years to take employment with companies who would not have a need for him after a short amount of time - has made life in the Stagliano household a bit chaotic. Kim has a very pragmatic attitude towards her life, however. She makes the point that autism (and unemployment, for that matter) don’t take time off, so neither can she, really as a mother you just do what you have to do.
“All I Can Handle, I’m No Mother Theresa” could have easily been one giant downer between the challenges of raising three daughters with pretty severe autism (one daughter gets lost twice in a single family trip, panicking Kim both times) and having multiple job losses and financial crises. However, enough of Stagliano’s wit and humor shines through, keeping the book, well, perhaps not light, but at least not depressing.
Anyone interested in autism or the lives of families living with autism would do well to pick up “All I Can Handle, I’m No Mother Theresa.” You may not agree with everything Stagliano says and believes (there is a LOT of controversy around autism issues), but you will absolutely learn a lot.
Buy this book from:
Powells.*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.* Amazon.*
This review was done with a book received from the publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell
Published by Random House
The last thing Gail Caldwell expected to find when training her dog Clementine was a best friend, but that is exactly what she found in Caroline Knapp, and more. Gail and Caroline’s dog trainer suggested then spend some time together because they were so alike. Both women had puppies they’d gotten less than a year ago, they were both writers, both recovering alcoholics, athletic, and incredibly independent. From that fateful meeting, the women formed a lasting bond that would sustain them until Caroline’s death of lung cancer, a short time after being diagnosed.
Released earlier this August, “Let’s Take the Long Way Home” is getting a lot of buzz. While I was at BEA, a representative of Random House listed it as one of the publishing house’s top 5 picks for book clubs this coming year. I must say, for about 140 pages, I didn’t really see it, and that is a long time in a book that is less than 190 pages long.
It also took me about that long to realize what my problem was with it. “Let’s Take the Long Way Home” is billed as a memoir of Gail and Caroline’s friendship, but it was almost more of an extended essay about their friendship, without the strong narrative of many of my favorite memoirs. Not that Caldwell didn’t have a strong voice, she does, but her writing milieu is on the critical side. Caroline was the columnist and memoirist in their relationship. Knowing this I’m not surprised that “Let’s Take the Long Way Home” was so much more like an essay, but it did not grab me as quickly as a more narrative-driven version of this story might have.
Of course, I can imagine that in many was, the essay structure was easier to write than the narrative would have been. There is so much love and pain, friendship and grief in this story, that for Gail to have gone deep into the story of her relationship with Caroline might have been deeply painful. Unfortunately, the pain is much of what makes this story so compelling. It was during Caroline’s sickness and after her death, the last 40 or so pages, that “Let’s Take the Long Way Home” really came into its own. Suddenly the pages seemed to be almost turning themselves, and my heart was fully immersed in this story.
Although I’m sure it would have been infinitely more difficult to write, I wish that Caldwell had been able to infuse more of the emotion from the end of “Let’s Take the Long Way Home” into the beginning of the book. However, even though I more appreciated the book for what it was than truly loved it, I think it is a must-read for any woman who has lost a close friend.
Buy this book from:
Powells.*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.* Amazon.*
This review was done with a book received at BEA.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Everything is Going to be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour by Rachel Shukert
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of Harper Collins
A proponent of the sex, drugs, and theater lifestyle, Rachel Shukert is thrilled when she gets a part in the play of a very prestigious director, even if she isn’t getting paid and has to wear a hat that looks like poo. Even better, the play’s run in New York is so successful that they mount a European tour. In Vienna, Rachel attempts to work around casual but virulent antisemitism and has an affair with an older man, whose father may or may not have been a Nazi. When the show’s run ends, Rachel can’t bear to return to New York, so moves to Amsterdam to crash in the apartment of her Dutch friend and his partner, and eventually shocks and offends nearly everyone she knows by dating a man with a long-term, live-in girlfriend.
“Everything is Going to be Great” is not for the easily offended. Although she is never particularly graphic - which I appreciated, Shukert is not the least bit shy about her sundry sexual exploits, nor about drinking binges, drugs, etc. This sort of narrative voice is extremely hit or miss with me. Quite often, it seems that the author is simply engaging in one final act of exhibitionism, and including everything they can remember that might be seen as shocking simply for the sake of being shocking.
This is not at all the vibe I got from Shukert. Instead of being shocking for shocking’s sake, she instead showed the admirable ability to poke fun at herself on the sly. While reading “Everything is Going to be Great” I could hear the sarcastic ‘can you believe this’ dripping across the page, headshakes of disbelief and all. At the same time, though, she told her story without the moralizing of hindsight, letting her actions speak for themselves and letting the reader experience them alongside her.
The style in “Everything is Going to be Great” is very reminisicent of David Sedaris, without seeming derivative. Actually, I think if Sedaris was a straight, Jewish woman he might actually be Rachel Shukert. Their senses of humor are very similar, and “Everything is Going to be Great” reminded me very much of Sedaris’s essays about living and traveling abroad. Even the level of possible offensiveness is roughly similar. The two main differences between Sedaris and Shukert for me are that I can only listen to audios of David Sedaris’s work - I don’t find that his humor translates well for me at all into the written word, but I did not encounter this problem at all while reading “Everything is Going to be Great” - and that Sedaris writes in essays, while Shukert’s work was a more cohesive long form memoir.
If you enjoy David Sedaris, it would definitely be worth your while to pick up “Everything is Going to be Great.” Highly recommended.
Buy this book from:
Powells.*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.* Amazon.*
This review was done with a book received from the publisher at BEA.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
My Life in Franceby Julia Child and Alex Prud-homme, narrated by Kimberly Farr
Synopsis:
This is Julia Child’s memoir of, you guessed it!, her life in France, including her time learning to cook.
Thoughts on the story:
I know this was co-written with Julia’s nephew, but man, did it ever have a strong sense of Julia’s voice. I was also amazed at how completely the meals that Julia ate and created in the 1950s were described. How could she really remember what she ate for her first meal in France so well as to describe it in exquisite detail? The detail was exquisite, though. She described the food with such passion and love that I almost actually wanted to eat the fish she was talking about, and I do not eat fish. She also inspired me to cook more, and to borrow her cookbook from the library - although I never actually made anything from it.
My only qualm is that she seemed to jump quickly from ‘I don’t really cook’ to “I love to cook and want to learn more!’ It didn’t feel like a very smooth transition.
Thoughts on the audio production:
Fantastic. Kimberly Farr did a fabulous job matching her narration to Julia’s voice in “My Life in France.”
Overall:
I thought this was a lovely audiobook, with mouth-watering descriptions of food and enticing descriptions of life in France post-World War II.
Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound: Audio/Print*
Amazon: Audio/Print*
This review was done with a book borrowed from the library.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith by Martha Beck, narrated by Martha Beck
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Synopsis:
In Beck’s first book, “Expecting Adam,” she told the story of her chaotic second pregnancy while she and her husband were in graduate school at Harvard. I was fascinated by the story she was telling, until she started feeling mystical presences everywhere, then the book gave me a major case of the eye rolls. This memoir comes after “Expecting Adam” chronologically and details their move back to Utah to be nearer her family and away from the anti-family culture they felt pervaded at Harvard in the 80s.
Beck and her husband were both Mormons and, in fact, Beck’s father is a big deal Mormon scholar. When the two of them returned to Utah, they both quickly got jobs at BYU, but both of them also began to feel the pressure of the church censoring what they taught - or at least strongly suggesting that they stay within certain lines in their teaching. Both of them begin bumping up against those lines set by the church and,eventually, Martha begins to feel inexplicably ill, until she has a revelation about her past that changes both of their lives.
Thoughts on the story:
Beck tells her story in “Leaving the Saints” in a very fitting format. She alternates between a scene in a hotel room in which she is confronting her father about something - we don’t find out what until some way into the book - and a chronological telling of the rest of her story. She actually starts with her marriage in the temple, glazes over their time in Harvard, and then goes more in depth as she moves into their return to Utah. I appreciated that she was relatively respectful of Mormonism - or at least of Mormons - despite her personal problems and issues with the religion. For instance, she was relatively reserved as far as sharing most of the rituals of the marriage rites, which are supposed to be sacred and secret. Now, I’d understand completely if people inside the Mormon church didn’t fully agree with me about her respect because things are obviously different when something is directed at something else near and dear to your heart, but I felt like she tried to be respectful of Mormons-as-people even though she had problems with the political structure of the church.
I did have a little bit of trouble with the memories that Beck uncovered. I didn’t want to be that person who just didn’t believe her but, at the same time, it was just the way she remembered. She was living more or less happily in ignorance then - bam! - uncovered repressed memories. The evidence she presented for her memories made total sense, but the sudden and complete nature of the memory retrieval that seemed…odd…to me. It brought up my own memories of the eye roll-inducing moments in “Expecting Adam,” which probably made it all the more suspect for me. Even so, I decided to suspend judgement and just let Beck tell me her story as she wanted to.
Thoughts on the audio production:
Martha Beck narrated her own story in “Leaving the Saints.” At first, I thought this was an extremely bad decision by her publisher, because her voice drove me absolutely insane. It was scratchy and rough and did not make for a very good listening experience. However, I do think it ended up working in favor of the story because, as things got more and more personal and painful, it was very moving to have her narrating. Even so, I’m glad it was a short audio - under 5 hours - because I’m not sure I could have take her voice much longer.
Overall:
If you are interested in Beck’s story of coming to terms with difficulties in the religion she was born into, then the audio could be a good way to go. Just make sure you are willing to to go through a little auditory annoyance to get the added value of having the author tell you her own story.
Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound: Audio/Print*
Amazon: Audio/Print*
This review was done with a book borrowed from the library.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Sandy
Michelle
Rebecca Rasmussen
Beth F
Stephanie
All I Can Handle, I’m No Mother Theresa: A Life Raising Three Daughters with Autism by Kim Stagliano
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Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell
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