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
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
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
Overall, I found this a charming and easy-to-read book about Schott’s experiences as a veterinarian of 28 years. I was somewhat uncomfortable with whaOverall, I found this a charming and easy-to-read book about Schott’s experiences as a veterinarian of 28 years. I was somewhat uncomfortable with what were obviously intended to be amusing anecdotes about some of his “wackier” clients. It struck me that he didn’t always have insight into why they might’ve behaved as they did. For example, an elderly lady kept records of her cat’s completely normal bowel movements (pages of which she then read to him). Indolent intestinal lymphoma is not uncommon in cats, and it manifests with changes in the animal’s stool. It is possible that this owner had previously lost a cat to lymphoma and was attempting to be proactive.
Schott also includes advice on pilling cats, suggesting that if owners have trouble with this, they should check to see if a long-acting injectable is available. The problem with this approach is that if the animal has an untoward serious reaction, nothing can be done about it. If you’re using pills, you can STOP administering them if the cat sickens. Once an injectable antibiotic like Convenia is in the body, however, it’s in there for the duration. Although generally well tolerated, this drug may cause a pet to “have decreased appetite, vomiting, decreased activity, depression, or anaphylaxis, which is a serious allergic reaction. Convenia® can also cause anemia, a decreased immune system efficiency, a blood platelet problem or a clotting problem.” The European Medicines Agency also warns that “Neurological signs (ataxia, convulsion or seizure) and injection site reactions have been reported in very rare cases after the use of the product.”
I’ve taken my companion animals to a heck of a lot of vets over the years. While it may be true, as Schott claims, that veterinarians are (or begin as) sensitive souls, they often don’t remain that way. I’m aware they’re stressed, overworked and exposed to a lot of suffering, not just that of the animals they care for but also of the people who are bonded with those animals. Some burn out very quickly. (The suicide rate in this career field is quite high.) It strikes me that the selection of perfectionist vet school candidates with the highest marks, just like the selection of the most academically successful students for medical school, may not be the best policy. Some of these candidates don’t reason effectively or handle stress well and they aren’t good with people (which Schott says is more important in vet medicine than most people know).
I agree with the author that going after veterinarians or anyone else for that matter on social media is highly problematic. However, I believe judiciously worded, factually based warnings about some practitioners is helpful to others who may be considering taking their pet to a particular clinic or vet professional. Regulatory bodies seldom hold negligent veterinary and medical professionals appropriately accountable. Dispensing “advice” is the most common response from regulators. No one checks to see that the advice is actually followed or adhered to....more
Dr. Sandeep Jauhar’s ambitious and eccentric father, Prem, grew up poor. He was eight years old when, during Partition, his family fled what is now PaDr. Sandeep Jauhar’s ambitious and eccentric father, Prem, grew up poor. He was eight years old when, during Partition, his family fled what is now Pakistan for India. Living for a time in wretched border camps where some family members died, they eventually settled in an area south of New Delhi, their home a one-room flat with no electricity or running water. Evidently an excellent student, Prem conscientiously did his homework under the streetlights. His mother later sold her jewelry to pay the tuition and necessary bribes for him to attend university. In the 1970s, he entered the US under the category “scientists of exceptional ability,” bringing his wife and children with him. A world-class geneticist, he ran a lab at the University of North Dakota for many years, working well into his seventies.
Before his retirement in 2014, however, there were indications that all was not as it should be. In 2012, the university instituted a requirement for faculty to publish two papers per year. Prem had 100 peer-reviewed papers to his name and in the past would probably have thought nothing of writing a couple more; now he chafed at the idea. He was also staying late at the lab to complete work, and his housekeeper later told Sandeep that Prem had gotten lost on the way home from work one night. A former neighbour phoned to express concern about Prem’s financial judgement. A few months later and now retired, the man who’d always been so careful with money was bouncing cheques, sending cash to random charities, and getting lost on Long Island where he’d relocated with Sandeep’s mother to be close to their sons. An easier, more sensible move to Minneapolis, where their daughter and her family lived, would never have occurred to the senior Jauhars. In traditional Indian families, elderly parents look to their sons for assistance. Rajiv, the eldest, and Sandeep lived in New Jersey. These were fully Americanized children. Growing up, they’d had a fraught relationship with their father, especially over drinking and dating. A sense of familial duty had been diluted, and they had been eager to get away.
Both cardiologists, Rajiv and Sandeep knew plenty about the heart; the brain, not so much. Their parents’ conditions would change that. Their mother was quite disabled by Parkinson’s disease and soon required an aide, and their father’s cognition was in fairly rapid decline. An appointment with a neurologist in November 2014 brought him a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment. This condition affects one in five elderly adults. Twenty percent of those diagnosed with MCI go on to develop dementia. Prem Jauhar would be one of them. For close to seven years, Sandeep, the son most like him in temperament, would encourage, plead with, and threaten his parent. He writes that he loved him, cared for him, and hated him, too. Trying to retain his own memory of his father, he “eventually came to know more about him—who he was, his likes and dislikes—than . . [Prem] knew about himself. That was a strange responsibility to carry.” The author says he reminded everyone that his father was more than his disease, but he also intimates more than once that he failed him.
In an effort to understand what was happening to Prem, Sandeep read widely—not only the medical literature, but also works related to the subject by sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and ethicists. He has expertly distilled this information and judiciously inserted it into the often moving story of his father’s decline (and his mother’s too). He tells about conflicts with his siblings over their father’s care. Principled Sandeep feels that out of respect, Prem deserves to be told the truth, his delusions corrected. Rajiv and Suneeta are far more pragmatic, willing to go with the flow, employ “therapeutic deception,” and allow their father his distorted versions of reality. Anything to avoid unproductive upsets and arguments. After their mother dies, there’s conflict between the three over placing their dad in a long-term-care facility. Knowing Prem would be assigned to a locked ward, Sandeep is opposed to the idea. Luckily, the family finds a gem of an Indian care giver, Harwinder, who takes a lot of abuse—verbal and physical—from Prem. He becomes sufficiently agitated and violent at times that a psychiatrist experiments with a range of psychoactive drugs to stabilize his mood. Harwinder comes to regard her charge as a father and perhaps has as much say as his children when it comes to end-of-life decisions.
Some may not appreciate the informational material woven into the memoir, but I really valued it. Among the many topics the author addresses are:
1. the plight of (unpaid) family caregivers—i.e., the emotional and financial cost of caring for a family member with dementia in the US. Jauhar says a typical family spends $80,000 USD annually for care for their loved one with Alzheimer’s disease;
2. how memory works and the important role of the hippocampus, which is typically the first part of the brain to be affected by Alzheimer’s;
3. the history of Alzheimer’s disease. Significantly, only in the 1970s was a consensus reached that this disease and senile dementia were one and the same thing. In the early twentieth century, Dr. Alois Alzheimer’s first patient, Auguste Deter, was still relatively young—50– when she became seriously ill: deluded, disoriented, and amnesiac. She died at age 55. For many years after, Alzheimer’s was considered a rare disease, striking those in middle age. It’s now known that the early- or young-onset form accounts for only 1% to 2% of total Alzheimer’s cases.
4. what’s going on in the brain. Most have heard about the beta amyloid protein plaques and the tangles of tau protein that destroy neurons, but the cause of Alzheimer’s still hasn’t been determined. The disease may be owing to inflammation. Recent evidence suggests that overactive immune cells in the brain, microglia, play a role. Bacteria that cause gum disease and herpes viruses also appear to be implicated in plaque build-up.
5. the personhood of the Alzheimer’s patient. Most definitions of personhood, going back to David Hume and John Locke, are very cogno-centric. According to Locke, a person is a “thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and considers itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places.” Jauhar notes that some modern philosophers have extended this idea. Derek Parfit, for example, has observed: “a person can cease to exist some time before his heart stops beating” and, under such circumstances, “we have no moral reason to help his heart go on beating, or to refrain from preventing this.” Peter Singer concurs, opining that euthanizing “neurologically devastated infants or adults with advanced dementia is no great moral transgression.” On the other hand, social psychologist Tom Kitwood expresses views which clearly resonate for the author. Connections, interactions, and relationships give life meaning. “Human beings,” Kitwood writes, “exist not only in an inward world but also in a public space.”
I appreciate Jauhar’s efforts to bring his experience with his father into the “public space.” I found My Father’s Brain a rich and rewarding read that is not without intense poignancy....more
“There is no doubt that Cabbagetown was a tough place to grow up. People there always said that if you managed to survive your youth, you would grow u“There is no doubt that Cabbagetown was a tough place to grow up. People there always said that if you managed to survive your youth, you would grow up to become either a priest or an axe murderer.”
Cabbagetown, a neighbourhood in central Toronto, has now been gentrified, but it was once the city’s—and maybe even Canada’s—largest slum. Named for the cabbage which was grown by Irish immigrants in their tiny front gardens, the area once consisted of dilapidated row houses—little more than shacks really—along narrow, potholed streets. In the post-war years, it was packed to the gills with immigrants from all over Europe, many of them Eastern-European refugees, but mostly Italians and Irish.
Terry Burke, seven of his eight siblings, and his parents came to live there in 1959, having emigrated from Ireland when Terry was twelve. Before the move to Canada, the Burkes had resided in a slum south of the Liffey. Terry’s father, “Da”, had no end of trouble finding work in Dublin. The family lived from hand to mouth on what he could bring home as a day labourer on the docks. Da had served during World War II and contracted malaria in the East. Once home, he experienced serious flares of the condition and often ended up in hospital. Terry’s mother, “Mamie”, was almost perpetually pregnant. She’d bear a total of eleven children, two of whom would die very young. Worn down by childcare and the strain of trying to make ends meet, she had a heart attack in her thirties. Rosaleen, the eldest child and a gifted student, had to leave school early to assist with running the household.
Things were, of course, supposed to improve in Canada. Certainly, there were more employment opportunities, but the pay was poor and the family was already in considerable debt. It took them two years to pay for the move to Canada alone. Social services for immigrants were nonexistent.
Burke’s memoir brings his family and the 1960s Toronto neighbourhood they lived in to life. Written in clear, unpretentious prose, the book details the many financial and social challenges the family and a few of Terry’s boyhood friends faced. One friend, Jimmy, faced a particularly hard lot. His father abandoned them, his mother was quite severely mentally ill, and the boy was sent to Pine Ridge, a notoriously abusive boys’ reform school east of Toronto, which ended up breaking him.
Burke is a fine storyteller and I found the tales of his childhood—including scrapes, brushes with the law, and his Catholic schooling—absorbing and affecting. Of central importance to his narrative is the very strained relationship he had with his father. Da could not abide lies of any variety, especially to Mamie. He’d pummel Terry within an inch of his life for even minor infractions. Mamie or another family member almost always had to intervene to put a stop to the violent corporal punishment meted out to Terry. It is unclear why Da took so vehemently against the boy. The author stresses that many of the nuns and priests who schooled him—particularly in Ireland—were abusive. (He experienced night terrors because of them and wonders if any of these educators ever experienced remorse or acknowledged in the confession box the degree to which they’d terrorized their charges.) It seems possible that Da’s behaviour reflected his own severe Catholic-school upbringing.
The tragedy that struck the Burkes in 1962, when Terry was around fifteen, only made matters worse between father and son. The boy was kicked out of the house at sixteen and ended up “lost” on the Cabbagetown streets for months—a harrowing experience.
Though Lost in Cabbagetown contains its share of hardship and sadness, it is not essentially a misery memoir. The author’s touch is relatively light and there is considerable warmth to be found in the book. Endurance, love, and loyalty, too. I do wish, however, that I’d been able to learn a little more about the early lives of the author’s parents.
I am grateful to Dundurn Press and Net Galley for providing me with an advanced review copy, which I compared with a final e-book edition from my local public library. Looking at the latter, I wish the book had received more meticulous proofreading. There were a number of careless and distracting typos....more
CanadianReader
>
Books:
autobiography-and-memoir
(261)
Loading...
