Alice Cary

Business & Finance

New frontiers in medicine and law

Review by Alice Cary

Herbert Weinstein was a charmer whose two adult children called him "Mr. Zen" because of his easygoing ways. They and everyone else who knew him were flabbergasted when, in 1991, during an argument, the 65-year-old retired advertising salesman strangled his second wife then threw her body out the window of their 12th-story Manhattan apartment in an attempt to make her death appear a suicide.

Weinstein's legal defense made history when his lawyer claimed that a benign brain cyst had caused him to go temporarily insane and commit the murder. As Kevin Davis explains in The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in America's Courtrooms, this was the first U.S. case in which a judge ruled that PET scan (positron-emission tomography) images could be shown to a jury determining a verdict.

The case is compelling, and Davis eloquently chronicles the many personal, medical, and legal details involved. A jury found Weinstein guilty; he served 14 years in prison before being released on parole in 2006 and dying in 2009.

The Brain Defense examines a variety of additional legal cases in which neuroscience has played a role, including those committed by veterans suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and TBI (traumatic brain injury), and athletes suffering from concussions and TBI. One mystifying crime involved a New Jersey man who in 2012 hit his head and fell into a brief coma for six hours, then awakened feeling unsteady, tired, and paranoid. Five days later in the middle of the night he inexplicably beat his wife, his 24-year-old daughter and himself with a 5-pound metal dumbbell, sending all three to intensive care. In this case, the defendant was found not guilty by reason of insanity, given psychiatric treatment and welcomed home by his family.

Davis interviews a variety of experts who work at the increasingly common intersection of neuroscience and law, including a Florida defense attorney who asks every one of his clients to undergo a brain scan. Davis notes that while brain science can sometimes be misused, it can be vital in deciding how to handle juvenile defenders, whose brains aren't fully formed, and in redefining "society's concepts of guilt and punishment." While neuroscience can't currently determine a person's thoughts or intent when a crime is committed, it can be extraordinarily useful in reducing incarceration rates and improving rehabilitation.

As one federal judge says, "The worst thing that can happen with neuroscience is that it gets into the courtroom before it's ready. There is a communication barrier between lawyers and scientists. We need to learn to speak the same language."

Herbert Weinstein was a charmer whose two adult children called him "Mr. Zen" because of his easygoing ways. They and everyone else who knew him were flabbergasted when, in 1991, during an argument, the 65-year-old retired advertising salesman strangled his second wife then threw her body out the window of their 12th-story Manhattan apartment in an attempt to make her death appear a suicide.

NonfictionMemoir

Looking back on a poignant romance

Review by Alice Cary

Love came quite late and unexpectedly for famed author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose many bestselling books include Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars. And it came in the form of writer Bill Hayes, a man 30 years his junior, as Hayes poignantly chronicles in his memoir Insomniac City. Sacks himself had revealed his homosexuality in a book published just months before he died―On the Move: A Life―explaining that after 30 years of celibacy, he and Hayes were sharing their lives.

Insomniac City begins as an illuminating treatise on grief. In 2009, after Hayes' partner of 16 years died of sudden cardiac arrest, the 48-year-old decided to leave his San Francisco home and start life anew in New York City. There Hayes' and Sacks' writerly friendship developed into love, chronicled here in chapters interspersed with Hayes' journal entries. The result is an intimate look at what life was like with the lovable, brilliant Sacks, whose terminal cancer diagnosis didn't stop him from writing, learning and soaking up the world's delights, or saying things like: "Wouldn't it be nice if there were a planet where the sound of rain falling is like Bach?"

An adept writer, Hayes weaves many threads into his latest book. In addition to honoring Sacks, it's a delicately woven love letter to New York City, a city he came to cherish. Included are black and white photos of not only Sacks, but the cityscapes and people with whom Hayes crossed paths, some of whom he describes in passages reminiscent of Humans of New York. His many encounters range from an evening spent driving supermodel and actress Lauren Hutton home from a chamber orchestra concert to a chat with young man on the street smoking a joint laced with crack. Of Hutton, Sacks commented, "I don't know who that was, but she seems like a very remarkable person."

Despite being a book that begins with one lover's death and ends with another, Insomniac City overflows with moment after moment of unexpected wonder and joy. Sacks, for instance, composes a list of eight and a half reasons to be hopeful soon after learning that his death was imminent. Hayes tenderly chronicles Sacks' last months and days, sharing moments like these: "He reaches for my hand when we walk, not just to steady himself but to hold my hand."

Love came quite late and unexpectedly for famed author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose many bestselling books include Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars. And it came in the form of writer Bill Hayes, a man 30 years his junior, as Hayes poignantly chronicles in his memoir Insomniac City. Sacks himself had revealed his homosexuality in a book published just months before he died―On the Move: A Life―explaining that after 30 years of celibacy, he and Hayes were sharing their lives.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A Hitchcockian story with an unlikely hero

Review by Alice Cary

Calling all Alfred Hitchcock fans: In her debut novel, British writer Lisa Thompson has brilliantly borrowed the director’s Rear Window plot, adapting it into a middle grade novel called The Goldfish Boy. Not only is this a riveting mystery filled with twists, turns and red herrings, it’s an emotionally complex tale centered on a 12-year-old narrator suffering from severe OCD.

Matthew Corbin feels safest in his home, where he constantly worries about germs and feels responsible for the death of his baby brother. He wears latex gloves and refuses to go to school, so his parents are in the process of lining up therapy. Meanwhile, Matthew watches his neighbors, taking notes about their comings and goings.

When a toddler goes missing, Matthew is the last to see him, and he knows what all the neighbors were doing at the time of the disappearance. He works diligently to solve the case, eventually joining forces with a lonely neighborhood girl, Melody, and a former friend, Jake, who’s been bullied so much that he’s become a bully himself.

Despite the severity of his problems, Matthew is an energetic, likable character whose adolescent voice and increasing self-awareness ring true. Rare is the book that manages to be an entertaining page-turner while also offering meaningful insight into a serious disorder. The Goldfish Boy manages to do both in a masterful way.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Calling all Alfred Hitchcock fans: In her debut novel, British writer Lisa Thompson has brilliantly borrowed the director’s Rear Window plot, adapting it into a middle grade novel called The Goldfish Boy. Not only is this a riveting mystery filled with twists, turns and red herrings, it’s an emotionally complex tale centered on a 12-year-old narrator suffering from severe OCD.

NonfictionNature

The secrets of a secluded life

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, March 2017

If you’re a fan of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, you might like The Stranger in the Woods even better. Once you start, in fact, you’ll likely have a hard time putting down Michael Finkel’s fascinating new book.

For decades, cottages on North Pond in Central Maine had been broken into, with food, flashlights, clothes, books and many other items stolen. In April 2013 a Maine game warden set a high-tech surveillance trap at a camp that had been repeatedly burglarized. The trap worked, and the mysterious culprit was finally arrested: 47-year-old Christopher Knight.

This “North Pond Hermit” had been living in a carefully camouflaged tent for 27 years, since the spring day in 1986 when the then-20-year-old abruptly left his job with a security company, drove his car into the backwoods of Maine and abandoned it. (Knight’s expertise with alarm systems proved particularly helpful during his more than 1,000 burglaries to stockpile food and supplies.) Even Knight wasn’t exactly sure why he abandoned both his family and society so suddenly, except to say that he felt like a “square peg.” 

Finkel, a journalist and author of True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, heard about Knight’s arrest and wrote to the jailed hermit. Surprisingly Knight wrote back. They exchanged several letters, and when Knight stopped writing, Finkel flew from his Montana home to visit the inmate in person.

During the course of their visits, Finkel managed to elicit details about the life of the man he calls the “most solitary known person in all of human history.” Finkel’s account artfully blends the details of Knight’s childhood, how he survived in the woods, his legal proceedings and his eventual uneasy return to society, along with informative descriptions of various hermits throughout history and their motivations. 

Well researched and compassionate, The Stranger in the Woods is a thought-provoking account that will make you thankful for your next hot meal and warm bed, especially on a stormy, bone-chilling night.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Michael Finkel about The Stranger in the Woods.

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you’re a fan of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, you might like The Stranger in the Woods even better. Once you start, in fact, you’ll likely have a hard time putting down Michael Finkel’s fascinating new book.

NonfictionMemoir

A heart-wrenching look at sisterhood

Review by Alice Cary

At first glance, life seems idyllic for golden-haired sisters Sheila and Maxine, daughters of privilege growing up in the 1940s and ’50s on a large estate near Johannesburg, South Africa. As Sheila Kohler notes in Once We Were Sisters, their family homestead was complete with “an army of servants,” swimming pool, tennis court and nine-hole golf course. While leaning on each other for love, laughter and support, the sisters studied in France, went to finishing school in Italy, married, bought homes in several countries and had children.

Sheila’s world was shattered in 1979 when Maxine, mother of six children, was killed in a car accident at age 39. Maxine’s husband Carl, a protégé of famed heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard, had driven their car off a deserted road and into a lamppost. Kohler believes the act was murder.

Maxine had confessed repeatedly that her husband beat her “Black-and-blue!” and during a visit in Sardinia, admitted that she was afraid to go home. To her eternal regret, Sheila advised her sister to return to her children.

Maxine’s death propelled Sheila into a life of writing: an MFA at Columbia followed by award-winning short stories, nine novels and her riveting new memoir.

“In story after story,” Kohler writes, “I conjure up my sister in various disguises, as well as other figures from our past. Her bright image leads me onward like a candle in the night. Again and again in various forms and shapes I write her story, colored by my own feelings of love and guilt.”

Kohler is a thoughtful, lyrical writer who shares memories of her colorful life in artfully arranged chapters that intersperse past and present in careful layers, exploring myriad family secrets hidden beneath a gilded, guarded exterior. Her soul-searching memoir remains skillfully lean while evoking lush images of life with her beloved sister. Throughout the narrative, Kohler ponders her sister’s fate, asking tough questions and concluding, “I am still looking for the answers.”

 

This article was originally published in the February 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

At first glance, life seems idyllic for golden-haired sisters Sheila and Maxine, daughters of privilege growing up in the 1940s and ’50s on a large estate near Johannesburg, South Africa. As Sheila Kohler notes in Once We Were Sisters, their family homestead was complete with “an army of servants,” swimming pool, tennis court and nine-hole golf course. While leaning on each other for love, laughter and support, the sisters studied in France, went to finishing school in Italy, married, bought homes in several countries and had children.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A gifted singer finds her voice

Review by Alice Cary

Life has been challenging for 10-year-old Cadence Mariah Jolly ever since her mother disappeared to pursue her musical dreams. As Cadence desperately yearns for her missing mom, she nurses her own musical and literary dreams in Sherri Winston’s heartfelt novel.

In a book brimming with musical allusions, Cadence lives in Harmony, Pennsylvania, and plans to become a “No.1 Bestselling Author of Amazing Stories.” Meanwhile, not even her family or best friends realize that she’s a gifted singer like her mom. Cadence—so shy that people call her Mouse—is trying hard to summon the gumption to change that.

Opportunity presents itself through youth choir auditions at Cadence’s lively, bustling church. Winston weaves occasional biblical references throughout the novel but still manages to create a story for all creeds and colors—a rare feat indeed. Too timid to audition in person, Cadence posts an anonymous video that soon goes viral, with news outlets vying frantically to identify the mysterious “Gospel Girl.” Ultimately, Cadence faces the agonizing choice of being true to herself or betraying one of her best friends.

Winston has a superb knack for creating intriguing middle school relationships, natural dialogue and an entire village of believable, multicultural characters. The Sweetest Sound is a deftly written saga that reads like a small symphony.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Life has been challenging for 10-year-old Cadence Mariah Jolly ever since her mother disappeared to pursue her musical dreams. As Cadence desperately yearns for her missing mom, she nurses her own musical and literary dreams in Sherri Winston’s heartfelt novel.

NonfictionEssays

A portrait of Michelle Obama as FLOTUS

Review by Alice Cary

As the Obamas leave the White House, their departure saddens many, as evidenced by the essays in The Meaning of Michelle, a diverse collection united by admiration in a “praise song” anthology. Whether discussing Michelle Obama’s shapely arms, her fashion sense or her “Evolution of Mom Dancing” with Jimmy Fallon, these 16 writers would all agree with chef Marcus Samuelsson’s observation: “It’s nothing short of stunning the way she manages a 24/7 news cycle.”

Samuelsson got to know the first lady in 2009 while planning and cooking the Obamas’ first state dinner, for the prime minister of India and 400 guests. He concludes, “I think she embodies the ability to shape the conversation around her better than any person that I know.”

Here and there, we learn interesting tidbits of Michelle’s past, such as the horrifying fact that when she attended Princeton as an undergraduate in the 1980s, the family of her first roommate protested to the administration that their daughter had been assigned to room with a black person. (It would certainly be interesting to check in on this family now.) We’re also reminded of smile-worthy moments, such as the self-proclaimed mom-in-chief’s response that if she could be anyone other than herself, it would be Beyoncé.

Those who feel despondent about FLOTUS leaving the White House are likely to rally behind novelist and essayist Cathi Hanauer’s closing plea: “She has said she’ll never run for president herself. To that I say: Never say never, Michelle. Let’s just see where we all are a decade from now.”

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

As the Obamas leave the White House, their departure saddens many, as evidenced by the essays in The Meaning of Michelle, a diverse collection united by admiration in a “praise song” anthology. Whether discussing Michelle Obama’s shapely arms, her fashion sense or her “Evolution of Mom Dancing” with Jimmy Fallon, these 16 writers would all agree with chef Marcus Samuelsson’s observation: “It’s nothing short of stunning the way she manages a 24/7 news cycle.”
NonfictionBiography

An author’s unconventional life

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, January 2017

One cold winter day in January 1991, Amy Gary, the owner of a small publishing company, struck gold in a living room in Vermont. The sister of the late children’s author Margaret Wise Brown showed Gary a trunk brimming with unpublished material—songs, music scores, stories and poems. From that moment on, Gary’s life changed, as she explains: “For over twenty-five years, I’ve tried to live inside the wildly imaginative mind of Margaret Wise Brown.” Her latest contribution to Brown’s legacy is the fascinating biography In the Great Green Room.

Brown, who wrote more than 100 children’s books, is best known for two beloved classics, Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny. Yet her personal life was the antithesis of those soothing bedtime tales, filled with drama, exuberance and, at times, sorrow and loneliness. Gary’s account captures Brown’s life in vivid, novel-like details and descriptions.

The glamorous children’s writer was certainly a study in contrasts. The woman who wrote about furry bunnies and other animals was a hunter—this book describes one such hare hunt with hounds. She was also wildly fun and inventive, throwing parties and leading a group of editors and writers in a self-proclaimed “Birdbrain Club.”

Born in 1910 and raised in a privileged background, she was educated at exclusive boarding schools in Switzerland and New England; however, she failed freshman English at Hollins College. Despite her success as a children’s writer, she longed to write more “serious” adult literature, but couldn’t.

Brown desperately tried to avoid the unhappiness she saw in her own parents’ marriage, and yet for most of her life, her love life was a shambles. While summering on the Maine coast she adored, she fell in love with a well-known womanizer who refused to marry her. She also loved and moved in with a woman 20 years her senior, the former wife of John Barrymore, who was often condescending toward Brown’s work. Finally, she found love with James Stillman Rockefeller Jr. (who writes a captivating foreword), a kind, energetic soul about 15 years her junior. They were about to be married when Brown tragically died at age 42, suffering an embolism after having an appendectomy in France.

For children’s literature buffs and fans of intriguing biographies, In the Great Green Room is a must-read.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, January 2017

One cold winter day in January 1991, Amy Gary, the owner of a small publishing company, struck gold in a living room in Vermont. The sister of the late children’s author Margaret Wise Brown showed Gary a trunk brimming with unpublished material—songs, music scores, stories and poems.

NonfictionMedicineHistory

A hospital’s fascinating history

Review by Alice Cary

If its walls could talk, New York City's Bellevue would probably have more tales to tell than almost any other hospital. David Oshinsky treats readers to many in Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital, a sweeping, detailed history of this mighty institution, America's quintessential public hospital. And who better to tell its tales than Oshinsky, a history professor at New York University whose Polio: An American Story won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize?

The list of famous Bellevue patients goes on and on. Songwriter Stephen Foster died in poverty there in 1863. Francis Ford Coppola filmed scenes of The Godfather in its morgue. Norman Mailer was committed there after stabbing his wife during a drunken rage. Both Mark David Chapman and John Lennon were brought to Bellevue after the music icon's assassination.

Oshinsky charts Bellevue's beginnings as one of America's earliest hospitals (and possibly its first, depending on definitions), whose origins can be traced back to a small infirmary built in the 1660s when the Dutch ruled Manhattan Island. Another infirmary opened on the site in 1736, which grew and grew, ultimately becoming the state-of-the-art facility it is today, with its world-renowned emergency service and trauma center. The early chapters of Bellevue are a fascinating look at not only the hospital, but the history of early medicine, when yellow fever raged and doctors blamed not mosquitoes, but miasma―bad air from decaying matter trapped in overhead clouds.

In the early 1800s, the author writes, Bellevue "reassembled a poorhouse with a vaguely medical bent," because those with means were generally treated at home and few doctors earned medical degrees. Things certainly changed, as Bellevue Medical College opened its doors in April 1861, just a day before the Civil War began.

Continued growth has meant constant challenges as well as triumphs: electric shock therapies beginning in the 1940s, with some patients as young as 4 years old; groundbreaking cardiopulmonary research; scores of AIDS patients treated at the epidemic's height; the unimaginable tragedy of Dr. Kathryn Hinnant in 1989, stabbed and killed by a homeless cocaine addict who had secretly been living in the hospital, posing as a doctor; the devastation from Hurricane Sandy, when staff valiantly evacuated patients from the hospital and used a bucket brigade to get fuel to back up generators; the successful treatment of a Doctors Without Borders patient suffering from Ebola in 2014.

As one Bellevue ER doctor so aptly observed, "This is war zone medicine. You'll never go anywhere in the world and see something we haven't seen here."

If its walls could talk, New York City's Bellevue would probably have more tales to tell than almost any other hospital. David Oshinsky treats readers to many in Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital, a sweeping, detailed history of this mighty institution, America's quintessential public hospital. And who better to tell its tales than Oshinsky, a history professor at New York University whose Polio: An American Story won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize?
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Master of pranks

Review by Alice Cary

Sixth-grader Maggie Gallagher is a hacker, but not with computers. She takes after her late father, who went to MIT, where he learned to “hack”—to pull wildly elaborate practical jokes. Stuck in the stagnant small town of Odawahaka, Maggie imagines conversations with him while living and breathing by his notebook, The Hacker’s Bible. She adores explosions, but she abides by her father’s rules to be safe and not destroy other people’s property. 

Not surprisingly, Maggie is Nothing but Trouble, especially after she teams up with a new girl in town named Lena. Their dilapidated school is about to be demolished, so the pair concoct a scheme to have a mascot mouse be elected class president, in honor of the fabled mice that live within the school’s walls. 

This is indeed the story of a mouse that roared, as what begins as a prank turns into a movement, empowering not only Maggie and Lena but all of their classmates to stand up against the dictatorial new principal, Mr. Shute. The girls find a surprising ally in their homeroom teacher, Mrs. Dorn-busch, the school’s oldest and most feared teacher, also known as the Dungeon Dragon.

While comical, the novel extols some high concepts. Lena is a fan of the Dadaist art movement (mentioned and explained throughout), and there’s an entertaining physics-based activity section at the book’s end related to hacking. Both at school and at home, Maggie learns to delve deeper into relationships, especially with her wheelchair-bound grandfather and still-grieving mother, who struggles with alcohol. Author Jacqueline Davies (The Lemonade War series) also leaves readers with a teaser in this first book of a new series, as Lena promises to explain some of her family’s “oddities” in the near future.

Filled with heart, humor and plenty of practical jokes, Nothing but Trouble portrays an improbable but poignant middle school world. Sometimes getting in trouble is worth it, Lena and Maggie learn, and middle school readers will enjoy their rollicking journey.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Sixth-grader Maggie Gallagher is a hacker, but not with computers. She takes after her late father, who went to MIT, where he learned to “hack”—to pull wildly elaborate practical jokes. Stuck in the stagnant small town of Odawahaka, Maggie imagines conversations with him while living and breathing by his notebook, The Hacker’s Bible. She adores explosions, but she abides by her father’s rules to be safe and not destroy other people’s property.
Children's & YAPicture Book

The greatest snowy day of all

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Children's Top Pick, November 2016

As is the case for many of my generation, Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day is one of the first books I recall enjoying in my small West Virginia town, a glorious tale that will remain seared in my brain. At the time I simply loved the book and its red snow-suited hero, Peter, having no clue that this 1963 Caldecott Medal winner was groundbreaking, the first mainstream picture book to feature an African-American child.

A Poem for Peter highlights the fascinating story of the book and its creator, who was born 100 years ago in Brooklyn to Polish-Jewish immigrant parents, began painting store signs in third grade and had to forfeit art school scholarships when his father died the day before his high school graduation.

Not only is Keats’ story compelling, but creative use of text and illustrations bring his world marvelously to life (with the added bonus of two short essays at the end). Andrea Davis Pinkney writes in “collage verse” or “bio-poem,” seamlessly weaving the biographical details of Keats’ life with commentary often addressed to Peter himself, noting how he and Ezra “made a great team” and how: “He dared to open a door. / He awakened a wonderland. / He brought a world of white / suddenly alive with color.”

In similar fashion, illustrators Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson use collage and their own lively artwork to incorporate images from five of Keats’ books, including The Snowy Day. Peter appears on the very first page and makes what Pinkney calls “peek-a-boo” appearances throughout, including a touching scene of Peter and Keats holding hands under a tree on a snowy day. This unique approach serves not only to thoroughly engage young readers but to effortlessly demonstrate how real-life experiences morph into literary influences.

An exceedingly well-done homage, A Poem for Peter is a visual and verbal treat for longtime Keats fans, as well as an exciting introduction for a legion of today’s young readers.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Take a peek inside A Poem for Peter.

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

As is the case for many of my generation, Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day is one of the first books I recall enjoying in my small West Virginia town, a glorious tale that will remain seared in my brain. At the time I simply loved the book and its red snow-suited hero, Peter, having no clue that this 1963 Caldecott Medal winner was groundbreaking, the first mainstream picture book to feature an African-American child.
NonfictionMemoir

A profound message from Paris

Review by Alice Cary

On November 13, 2015, the world watched with shock and sorrow as terror erupted at several sites in Paris, including the Bataclan Theater where at least 89 people were killed. Among the dead was Hélène Muyal-Leiris, whose husband, Antoine Leiris, was at home watching their 17-month-old son. Leiris soon posted a Facebook message to the attackers that went viral, beginning, “On Friday night, you stole the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hate.”

You Will Not Have My Hate is his account of the immediate days after the attack as he struggled to make sense of his loss. Leiris’ slim memoir is a portrait of raw grief, of trying to keep one’s head above water in a world that no longer makes sense. His son, Melvil, became an anchor amid the tragedy, providing a need for daily routine that kept his father moving forward. The author describes the heartbreak of seeing his wife one last time in the mortuary, the beauty of his son’s innocent smile, and how he sat down at his computer one afternoon to write his famous post: “House, lunch, diaper, pajamas, nap, computer. The words continue to arrive. They come on their own, considered, weighed, but without me having to summon them. They come to me.”

His account ends with Hélène’s funeral and his subsequent visit to her grave with his toddler, as they bravely “go on living alone, without the aid of the star to whom they swore allegiance.”

The book reaffirms Leiris’ profound message that he will raise his son to “defy [the attackers] by being happy and free. Because [they] will not have his hate either.”

 

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

On November 13, 2015, the world watched with shock and sorrow as terror erupted at several sites in Paris, including the Bataclan Theater where at least 89 people were killed. Among the dead was Hélène Muyal-Leiris, whose husband, Antoine Leiris, was at home watching their 17-month-old son. Leiris soon posted a Facebook message to the attackers that went viral, beginning, “On Friday night, you stole the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hate.”
NonfictionMemoir

Sisters to the end

Review by Alice Cary

Elizabeth Lesser has devoted her life to helping others find their way to health, healing and spirituality, writing books that include Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow and cofounding the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies. In Marrow: A Love Story, she chronicles a deeply personal crisis: Her younger sister Maggie’s lymphoma had returned after seven years of remission, and she needed a bone marrow transplant. Lesser turned out to be a perfect match.

Lesser and her three sisters hadn’t always gotten along, so Lesser decided that she and Maggie also needed what she terms a “soul marrow transplant” to fully understand each other and to help provide optimum body-spirit conditions for Maggie’s healing. Marrow is thus part medical account and part self-help/spiritual discussion, ultimately showing readers how to find their “authentic selves” as well as to better understand those close to them. While this may not be every reader’s cup of tea, Lesser is a clear-spoken, truly helpful guide who realizes that one approach rarely suits all.

Raised by fiercely anti-religious parents who turned to the altar of The New Yorker, the outdoors, social justice and literature, Lesser was born with what she calls “a spiritual ache in my bones.” As the only adult sister not to live in Vermont, she sometimes felt she didn’t fit in, while the other sisters thought she was bossy. Meanwhile Maggie, a loving, free-spirited nurse, mother and accomplished botanical artist, left her marriage after many years and was diagnosed with cancer not long after.

Sadly, Maggie ultimately lost her battle with lymphoma, but the sisters’ “soul marrow transplant” worked beautifully. Maggie ended up living what she called the best year of her life, while all four sisters reached out to each other to overcome childhood misunderstandings. Meanwhile, Maggie and Elizabeth became the best friends they were always meant to be.

As Maggie explained, “the big trick” of “just being who I am” worked. “The more I stopped trying to be a perfect little human being for everybody else,” she said, “the more I stopped expecting other people to be perfect. The more I trusted myself, the more I trusted other people. It’s the darndest thing.”

In Marrow: A Love Story, she chronicles a deeply personal crisis: Her younger sister Maggie’s lymphoma had returned after seven years of remission, and she needed a bone marrow transplant. Lesser turned out to be a perfect match.

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