Reviewed by Addison Ciuchta

An honest & raw look at one man’s experience with schizophrenia and mental health stigma

Karl Lorenz Willett writes with honesty and hope. More like a glimpse into his mind rather than the filtered experiences you’d expect out of a memoir, this book covers a range of topics that include his financial struggles, his relationship with his wife, and his experience tapering off his schizophrenia medication.

Willett’s writing is vulnerable, sharing his deepest thoughts and real actions even if they show him in a less-than-perfect light. Which, it seems, is the whole point of the book. In his introductory chapter, Willett says he hopes to teach readers more about the condition of schizophrenia, including the lows like the stigma from society and the side-effects of anti-psychotic medications and the highs like his family, his healing, and his successes, like publishing this very book.

Chapters come with great variety. They document his experience off medication but also reach to his views on religion and the minutiae of daily life. His strength and his positivity radiate from the page. Dealing with the administrative burden that comes with mental health issues and coming to terms with some of the other low points of his life since 2016, like a one-sided romantic infatuation, only heightens his sense of purpose—which is, he says, “to spread peace, love and happiness, to encourage people to live life to the full and help others to do the same.”

At times, the writing can get repetitive with Willett explaining why he wants to taper his medication numerous times. Chapters circle back to the idea and his progress, but this repetition also helps illustrate the way his brain works without a filter. The way he keeps reassuring himself of his dedication to taper off, to the benefits he sees in doing it and the risks involved too. He is not advocating for everyone to do what he did but instead simply documenting the hows and whys of his own decision to do so.

Many chapters or parts of chapters document Willett’s deep fear of our current moment in the world: shootings, climate change, natural disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic. But still, he has hope. He writes. “I have plenty of concerns about the planet, but there are reasons to be hopeful about the world’s fate for the first time in a long time.” Despite the struggles, the stigma, and the side effects, Willett’s deep hope in himself and in the world shines through.

This book is an interesting plunge inside an interesting brain, an opportunity to experience feelings, anxiety, and mental illness out in the open. It is a touching and hopeful memoir that will give readers a deeper understanding of how mental health affects those around us.

Thank you for reading Addison Ciuchta’s book review of A Good Life by Karl Lorenz Willett! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

Thank you for reading Addison Ciuchta’s book review of A Good Life by Karl Lorenz Willett! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: A Good Life by Karl Lorenz Willett appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Toni Woodruff | Content warnings: child sexual abuse

Heartbreaking and vulnerable—a story that should never exist

It takes power to tell this story. It takes bravery and strength and a machete—a way to chop through the tangled vines of trauma to forge a path ahead. Such a Pretty Picture is a powerful story that will break your heart and, hopefully, put it back together again.

Be ready for it though—the content warning is an important one. If you have experienced sexual abuse and are not up to experiencing someone else’s, this book will likely be triggering.

Andrea Leeb was four years old when her father first started molesting her. Her mom even saw it, but she went blind directly afterward. Her vision may have come back two weeks, but her figurative blindness remained. They didn’t speak of the molestation after the event, and her mother denied it when Andrea was finally old enough to confront her about it.

It wasn’t the only time either. Andrea was sexually molested by her father for more than ten years after that. He’d always follow up his actions with kindness and gifts, and he kept up an impeccable outward persona. He was a professor, a reader, and a confusingly kind dad.

We know, like Andrea knows, how bad her father is from the very beginning, but everyone else, including her mother, would have to wait years to find out that he’s been tricking people—completely separate from the abuse of Andrea. The perfect perception of him comes crumbling down even as he’s propped up by Andrea’s frustratingly forgiving mother.

Unfortunately, Such a Pretty Picture is a very real story. It’s a meaningful book for sexual abuse survivors to recognize that they are not alone. They’re likely going to have to confront their own pain to do it though. Scenes of sexual abuse are included, and while Andrea’s story lifts us up in the end, it’s only after our hearts are broken over and over again. She’s a smart, brave, and strong young girl who grows into a powerfully inspiring survivor.

This is also a story of sisterly love. Andrea and her younger sister Sarai are close and best friends. In their younger days, Andrea would stick up for Sarai and protect her with a glowing, angelic love. In a story of so much sadness, it’s a relief to get to experience this deep well of sibling love. You’re going to love their relationship.

The storytelling is spare and clean, yet packed with emotion. Such a Pretty Picture reads almost like it is made of stone—something you can drop but never break. A moving story with a heavy load to bear.

Thank you for reading Toni Woodruff’s book review of Such a Pretty Picture by Andrea Leeb! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: Such a Pretty Picture appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski

A soldier’s search for meaning leads him down a path toward redemption in this touching poetic memoir.

A self-described warrior poet muses on his troubled childhood, war experiences, and the struggle to keep his family and finances together in the wake of the 2008 financial crash in Downriver by Ryan McDermott.

The product of fifteen years of rumination and catharsis, McDermott’s memoir is a quest for love, family, and reconciliation with a past that still haunts him. “I learned dreams couldn’t shield me from the inequities of life,” McDermott says about his childhood in 1980s Orlando, Florida.

Growing up with a single mother, McDermott cites the absence of his biological father as the “void” he has always wrestled with, ameliorated at times by a stepfather and uncles who try to provide structure, despite their flaws. It is McDermott’s ambition to rise above the troubling legacies in his family—alcoholism, failure, and co-dependency—that push him to West Point and officer training.

Accepted into West Point in 1996, McDermott found his calling and his creative voice. “Poetry became my voice to express what I had to suppress, the part that longed for connection and struggled with loneliness,” he explains. These poems are reprinted within McDermott’s memoir alongside the moments that inspired them, illuminating the artist underneath the military uniform and camouflage. Simple, yet sophisticated in imagery, the poems serve as a bookend for both the traumatic and triumphant moments in his life.

McDermott sheds light on the difficult, yet evolving relationship with his mother, Patty, and examines the impact of not having a father in his life; one can see in his choice of the military a surrogate for what he lacked at home. “I was a momma’s boy and illegitimate son. I embarked on the West Point experience as a rite of passage into manhood.” His engaging descriptions of a “day in the life” of a cadet, as well as what infantry basic officer training and Army Ranger School taught him are great fodder for those studying leadership principles, as well as for the military enthusiast.

While McDermott marches through his life story in a staccato chronology of military training, exercises, leadership lessons, and the friends he met along the way, the beating heart of the memoir is his intense desire to find love and build his own family. As he writes, “the river of life is rarely straight,” and through a series of twists and turns, McDermott finally finds the woman of his dreams, Lucy, before 9/11 occurs and turns his carefully laid plans upside down.

The narrative turns to more technical (yet fascinating) aspects of Army training and tactical deployment in the Kuwaiti Desert in 2003. In economic prose, McDermott relates his role as platoon leader directing a “hunter-killer team” of tanks and infantry in Iraq. It is during “Objective Peach,” an assault to capture the Al-Kaed Bridge, that McDermott sees his first dead man—an Iraqi man thrown into the bridge railing, eyeless and contorted:

“My proximity to him left a permanent mark upon me, one of many ghosts I still carry from the war. To this day, I can’t cross a bridge without being reminded of those moments. The chaos of the war lingers still.”

In the closing section appropriately entitled “Collapse,” McDermott explains the decisions leading to his employment with Lehman Brothers—a curious career choice at odds with the soldierly life of self-sacrifice. McDermott’s unflinching honesty is admirable as he admits to his “selfish ambition” to become an investment banker: “the childhood fantasy of becoming Luke Skywalker was erased from my mind. I readily gave in to the temptation of the dark side.” The “golden handcuffs” of a high-paying career in finance strain his marriage and his connection to his son, Brandon, as work becomes everything. Until it all came crashing down in the financial crisis of 2008, followed by the breakup of his home and a terrifying home invasion in 2011 that left him beaten and bruised, physically and emotionally.

McDermott uses poetry throughout to color the emotions and internal contradictions during his military training for war—and during the real thing itself—and he includes dramatized scenes with a therapist he sought for help with his PTSD in 2011. These devices work well within the narrative, adding nuance and an objective third party view of his issues. There is much to reconcile in McDermott’s life—with his mother, absent father, siblings, and his wife and son. The journey continues after the last page, but readers will appreciate the raw search for healing and wholeness that McDermott fearlessly conveys through his poetry and now prose.

Downriver is a heartfelt and perceptive examination of redemption and the river-like way of its wandering to life’s next unknown bend.

Thank you for reading Peggy Kurkowski’s book review of Downriver by Ryan McDermott! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review – Downriver: Memoir of a Warrior Poet appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Erin Britton

Childhood damage and adult misery are somehow eclipsed by hope in this powerful memoir.

…And Then I Would Fly, Damien Thompson’s evocative memoir of a childhood shaped by dysfunction but characterized by hope, sheds light on the immense damage that mental health issues, addiction, relationship breakdown, and domestic abuse can cause to individuals, families, and society at large. However, it simultaneously reflects how such damage can be overcome by the irrepressible loyalty, compassion, and determination of youth. Above all, it is a book that will inspire, motivate, and encourage those in similar situations.

Thompson’s recollections begin in the 1980s, “in a green multi-level house in the south of Omaha, Nebraska.” He is a young child at the time, and unusually, he chooses to write his memoir in an age-appropriate tone and style: “I am little.” The early stories he tells are often deceptively wholesome, focusing on family time and the activities he and his parents engage in, particularly listening to music, writing, and making art.

Still, there is always something darker lurking in the background, something suggestive of the happy family really being anything but content and united. For instance, Thompson wakes one morning and observes, “My dad is still out cold in bed. He probably stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, watching movies. My mother is at work.” There are clear indications that his fun dad is not always so fun and that his mother is responsible for keeping the family ticking over.

As a consequence, his dad’s presence looms large over the narrative from the outset and causes considerable confusion. On the one hand, his dad has “a strong sense of caregiving in him” and is always willing to help those in trouble, perhaps after a flat   tire or having been locked out. He also has a job working with adults with intellectual disabilities. He’s certainly not, at least not in the early years, an out and out bad guy, and Thompson practically worships him: “My father embodied all things that I could fathom in a hero.”

On the other hand, his dad has a nasty streak in him. For example, on one occasion when eight-year-old Thompson is struggling during a swimming lesson, rather than offering him encouragement, his dad starts to goad him. “I hated when my dad cussed. He was going to try and humiliate me in front of the rest of the class.” It’s impossible not to feel sorry for Thompson during such incidents, but it’s equally impossible not to be impressed by how clear-sighted his interpretations and understandings of things are.

These insightful memories ensure that Thompson’s dad is portrayed as a deeply flawed and complex, albeit still somewhat relatable, character. Of course, Thompson’s mother has her own opinions on the matter and eventually seeks a divorce, but even the family breakdown is presented in a self-serving and manipulative way by Thompson’s dad: “His lip began to quiver a little bit and he looked very soft and I suddenly felt scared and sad that he was sad. He looked at me and said, ‘Daddy’s not going to live at home anymore.’”

In keeping with his immediate self-pity and lack of self-reflection, Thompson’s dad blames his soon to be ex-wife for everything, uttering comments such as “She doesn’t want to get help” and “She’s not willing to listen, Damien.” In fact, he manipulates Thompson into haranguing his mother and attempting to change her mind (“I pushed my way through the front door, my dad dragging behind, a broken man anxious to see if there was a solution here.”), even after it emerges that the parents had previously agreed to tell Thompson about the divorce together.   

Fortunately, his mother sticks to her guns. “She wasn’t without a voice, but many times she went along to get along. In this particular instance, I saw her blood begin to boil.” She must have been a stronger character than she appears in Thompson’s early memories and it would have been good to know more about her and understand her character better. As it is, even post-divorce and with the benefit of decades of hindsight, she is subsumed under the bombastic character of her former husband.

All the upheaval results in Thompson taking on responsibilities and worries far beyond his young age. “She didn’t seem to want to talk details with me. My dad seemed driven to.” His dad continues to manipulate, but he also breaks into the old family home, reads his ex-wife’s diary, steals small items, and engages in other petty nonsense. And things somehow become even worse after his dad shacks up with the eighteen-year-old Dolores, a relationship almost immediately marked by anger and violence.

“Dolores got pregnant near the end of my twelfth year on the planet. I was devastated. The crazy bitch had done it. She had divided and conquered.” The emotional confusion of the young Thompson is immediate and visceral. From this point on, as he continues with his (inherited) spiral toward self-destruction during his teenage years and young adulthood, he does so while keeping an eye on his little sister Lily. For a while, she seems to be the one bright point in his troubled life, even if the sibling relationship is not an easy one.

…And Then I Would Fly spans Thompson’s life from the early 1980s to around 2020, from childhood to adulthood, from confusion and anger to understanding and some degree of acceptance. His life doesn’t exactly get easier, it certainly doesn’t become any smoother, and he doesn’t manage to avoid all the vices that have seemingly plagued his family for some generations; however, he manages to retain his hope and his belief that there might be better things around the corner.

Thompson’s memoir is an often difficult and sometimes heartbreaking read, but it also manages to be life-affirming. As his experience shows, even in the darkest times, the sun will still rise and there is always the possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness. Thompson’s life so far has been a difficult one, although it has also been a fulfilling one, and hopefully there are brighter days in store. On that basis, his honest reflections will inspire those with similarly difficult family lives.

“Our family was this way. They wanted sleeping dogs to lie. It was easier not to speak about uncomfortable subjects, so they wouldn’t.”

Thank you for reading Erin Britton’s book review of …And Then I Would Fly by Damien Thompson! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: …And Then I Would Fly appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski

A raw and unapologetic memoir of anti-war activism and speaking truth to power

“I am not a hero because I served in Vietnam.” 

With these words, author and Vietnam War veteran Peter P. Mahoney puts the reader on notice. I Was a Hero Once does not traffic in clichés or patriotic platitudes. Rather, Mahoney celebrates his counterculture and progressive bona fides in this engrossing romp through an eventful “post-adventure life” after Vietnam.

In writing the memoir for his children, Mahoney says he also addresses the younger generation they represent, who will have “to deal with the mess of a world” left to them. It is his story of how he became who he is now, how he shed the macho martial legacy in his family by protesting his own war and finding peace and contentment in the present. 

While Mahoney’s life post-Vietnam was one of anti-war activism, his road to Vietnam followed prescribed rites of manhood. Following in the footsteps of his military fathers and grandfathers, Mahoney joined the Army in 1968: “I needed to prove myself, to establish my manhood in the quintessential American way: by participation in a war.” After two years that included language training and Officer Candidate School (OCS), Mahoney arrived in Vietnam in 1970 as an infantry lieutenant and advisor to South Vietnamese military forces. 

After only eleven months in country but witness to numerous horrors, Mahoney returned to America in 1971 “a changed man, disgusted and disillusioned.” He was drawn to a group called Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), finding fellowship among other vets who could potentially understand how he was feeling.  From there, Mahoney took increasingly prominent roles within the organization as well as morally questionable actions like throwing red dye balloons at dignitaries of the United Nations. 

Mahoney’s reflections on being one of the Gainesville Eight, in which he was indicted along with other VVAW members for conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1972 Republican National Convention, are revealing in that they make connections with the Watergate scandal some might not expect. The Nixon administration feared the VVAW’s “violent intentions” and was a factor in the bugging of the Democratic National Committee offices, Mahoney suggests. From there, Mahoney relates his experiences in a variety of jobs from Wall Street to international aid worker, skillfully moving from past to present in alternating chapters that tie the author’s life together effectively. 

The power in Mahoney’s memoir is in its ability to elicit a reader immediately. He is a blunt and earnest narrator, matter of fact in places where others might gasp. For instance, his middle-finger chapter reflecting on Veterans Day and the “requisite platitudes” thanking veterans for their service is strong brew. Capitalism does not fare much better. However, where politics clashes with pragmatism, at least Mahoney is honest acknowledging it: 

“It is ironic the one ideal I never aspired to, the American Dream, is the one that I seem to have been most successful at.”

Mahoney is at his best when he turns his gaze inward, musing on his boisterous Irish upbringing or waxing philosophical on the nature of death and memory. His joy recounting falling in love again in his late-40s to a Russian woman and starting a family is palpable—including a closing letter to his children as a touching coda. 

I Was a Hero Once is an engaging memoir that tells a story not often celebrated in American history: the veteran anti-war activist. With this book, Mahoney adds his testimony to this unique historical hall of fame.

Thank you for reading Peggy Kurkowski’s book review of I Was a Hero Once by Peter P. Mahoney! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: I Was a Hero Once appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Nikolas Mavreas

An amusing and informative memoir about NASA from the inside

From Apollo to Artemis is the memoir of retired long-time NASA employee Herb Baker, who has been with the organization through its decades of ups and downs, literal and figurative.

From childhood, Baker found himself around the world of NASA. He grew up in Houston, his home only seven miles away from the later-named Johnson Space Center. He was schoolmates with children of astronauts. His mother, Alyene Baker, worked as seamstress on a parasol which was put into orbit by the first Skylab crew.

As a teenager, Baker got the chance to work on-site at the Space Center for ABC, during their coverage of Apollo 11 and subsequent missions. His job included taking the canisters from each day’s filming and driving it 50 miles away to the Houston airport, to be flown from there to New York. Which means that if you’ve seen TV footage of Apollo 11 it is possible that what you saw had literally passed through his hands.

After studying business at university, Baker landed an interview with NASA and was hired. He worked as a contracting officer for most of his career at the agency, both in Washington, D.C. and, mainly, at the Johnson Space Center in his hometown. His projects included contracts for the design of space suits that would continue to be used for forty years, and Space X’s first contract with NASA. After his retirement in early 2017, Baker has been involved in community outreach through the NASA Alumni League, promoting science education, speaking to students and even to nursing home residents unable to visit the Johnson Space Center.

Baker goes into technical detail of what his contracting work entailed, but generally this book is characterized by light and fun discussion about the organization and the people that made it work. It is a delightful look at the endearingly square world of NASA. 

For example, we read about and see (this volume is full of photographs) an elevator whose doors look like an airlock, with its inside walls decorated to seem like one is looking out on the Moon. And when Baker tells of his experience with taste-testing food that would go out into space, we are disappointed that the guacamole his response helped improve doesn’t end up making the cut. 

From Apollo To Artemis makes clear that its author truly and enthusiastically loves NASA and is eager to spread his passion. Never in this book is his pride more evident than when he is granted the privilege to bring guests into the Johnson Space Center, and never is he more gloomy than when he has to give up the privilege upon retirement. Herb Baker may not be able to give tours of the Space Center any longer, but his book serves as an inviting tour inside the everyday reality of working at NASA.

Thank you for reading Nikolas Mavreas’s book review of From Apollo to Artemis by Herb Baker! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: From Apollo to Artemis appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Erica Ball

An emotionally charged, beauty-filled memoir of emotion and identity at a time of massive change

One day, Carolyn Dawn Flynn’s life fell apart. She saw it coming—well, some of it. 

The single mother of teenage twins, she knows their last year of high school will be challenging. And she knows that she needs to prepare for the reality of an empty nest. With her career as a journalist insufficient for financing the education of the twins’ dreams, Flynn decides to chase a new life of her own, accepting a high-paying job across the country. 

This means that, in the same span of time that Flynn is helping her kids choose their college and future and navigate their transition to adulthood, she is also repairing and packing up their family home and juggling the logistics of all three relocations. She understands all this going in. What she doesn’t know is that her decision to move sets off a series of events that will unravel her sense of self and push her to the brink. 

It sets her off on a quest the size of which she could never have anticipated. Not long after arriving in what is supposed to be her new home, Flynn finds herself embroiled in a toxic situation not of her own making. Despite valiant efforts on her part, she is set adrift, cut loose from the only tether tying her to a particular place. 

With unpacked boxes and a scattered family, living for the first time in decades without children or a job to fill her days, Flynn’s questions of identity, place, and future spiral out of control. The sheer number of decisions facing her is overwhelming. When nowhere is home, where do you go? The terrifying limitlessness of the future stops her in her tracks. 

Such disruptive times inevitably force us to look back, so Flynn also must contend with memories and feelings she’d long held in check. She remembers the traumatic day her twins almost died and after which she was acutely aware of the delicate balance that keeps life moving forward. She remembers the beginning of the verbal abuse of her now ex-husband, which he continues to inflict on her and which she knows she needs to address. She remembers her beloved mother, whose dining room set they had to part with for Flynn to make this move—one that might be for nothing. 

Luckily, she has tools to draw on. A long-time practitioner of mindful meditation, she relies on those teachings as well as her explorations of faith to direct her search for answers on the priorities of living and where to focus energies. She also draws on long and deep conversations from her support system of friends and family to sort out her thoughts. And she writes. 

With poetic phrasing featuring vivid descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of the places she finds herself in, Flynn criss-crosses the country from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Saratoga Springs, New York, dealing with the many unresolved items still on her to-do list. As vivid is the author’s inner life as she is forced to face her darkest emotions and desperate moments.  

With the author’s immense skill at exploring these deep inner worlds, this memoir is highly recommended for those who have found themselves at a crossroads in their identity, living situation, career, family, or relationships, which will likely be almost everybody. It will especially resonate with caretakers and parents who have automatically given their all to others and maybe lost a little of themselves in the process. 

Boundless is not just a story of a life in transition. It is also a hero’s journey out of the everyday world into one that questions everything from the necessity of material goods to the purpose of human life itself. With only her relationships to guide her through this transience and to transcendence, Flynn journeys into the darkness of the unknown and back to life again. But, of course, even when back again, everything has changed. In the end, it is about how we need never stop reinventing ourselves. And that a coming of age can happen at any point in the long years of a life.  

Thank you for reading Erica Ball’s book review of Boundless by Carolyn Dawn Flynn! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post STARRED Book Review: Boundless appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Reiser

An authentic approach to moving forward from family trauma and toxicity

This Stops With Me is an emotive & raw memoir about Louise Grayhurst emerging out of the fraught relationship she had with her narcissistic mother.

A domestic violence and family law attorney and mediator by day, Grayhurst comes from a place of passion in helping people work through toxic relationships. This makes sense, as she she was in one for most of her life. It was not until the age of 35 Grayhurst found the strength, after years of trauma and abuse, to remove her narcissistic parent from her life. She is now sharing tangible ways others can do the same. 

Familial relationships can be complex, and the decision to distance yourself from family members is often considered taboo. With This Stops for Me, Grayhurst asks if family bonds should really be unbreakable. Her personal story of severing ties with her mother and siblings gives a beating heart and personality to the self-help side of the book.

This book provides real value for readers contemplating a similar decision. Grayhurst lays out the tactics used by narcissistic abusers to gain control and alienate their victims and intimates that it’s a cycle that needs breaking, perhaps with clearly established boundaries or maybe with cutting contact altogether. Grayhurst shows how with expertise and experience.

Predominantly a self-help book, it’s made much more engaging with her personal journey. While it’s at once a story about removing people who do not add value to her life, it also tells a compelling story about healing in her relationship with her sister and carving out a fresh start with her. It’s an all-encompassing book, a moving story about important decisions and how it can help others struggling with the same. It is not so much a book about ending relationships as it is about healing the one you have with yourself in the best, most informed way you can. 

The wounds from her relationship with her sister remain evident, but this just gives off the impression that she is a work in progress and that you are too. This memoir enthusiastically proclaims the freedom and joy that can come with healing and moving on, but it simultaneously communicates that those readers seeking help will not achieve this freedom overnight. The topic is sensitive, personal, and balanced; it should land nicely with readers looking for guidance.

This Stops With Me is straightforward with dashes of humor to lighten the heavy topic of challenging familial relationships.

Thank you for reading Elizabeth Reiser’s book review of This Stops With Me by Louise Grayhurst! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: This Stops With Me appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Zender

A fast-paced and funny memoir through the South China Sea

Author and retiree Norman Coutts travels to Thailand to help one of his good friends relocate their yacht to the Philippines in The Naked Sailor. His long-time pal Rob is moving to be with his new partner, and he invites Norman along as part of the crew for the boat. Despite a lack of knowledge surrounding what it takes to be a first mate, Norman jumps at the chance to travel and spend time with his friends.

Coutts is in for a bit of a shock. He travels with another friend, John, to meet up with Rob, and the three of them embark on what turns out to be a journey of a lifetime. How can anyone pass up the chance to see more of the world with their friends? 

Norman, John, and Rob explore various countries and islands on their way to the Philippines, stopping to visit Malaysia, Singapore, and more. Coutts shares his views and changing mindset as he takes readers through the weeks of his trip. From dangerous weather and pirates to hilarious shipmates and new acquaintances, there is much to love in this lighthearted voyage.

Lovers of adventure will not be disappointed with this memoir. Coutts’s travels are fascinating, fun, and a little feral; the things he and his friends encounter along the way are unlike anything he has seen before. Through the previously unworldly eyes of the author, readers see new sights and challenge their own opinions on the way the world works outside of their own bubble of existence.

Again and again, I was struck by the complexity and detail in Coutts’s prose. Passages from the memoir share beautiful sights and intricate details of the cities the three men visit. Coutts paints a picture so vivid you can close your eyes and imagine standing on the streets alongside him. 

One of my favorite such passages is from their stop in Greece, in which he describes “lights in trees and lights on poles and a canopy of light that created a causeway of colour.” The way he shares the sights, the sounds, and, of course, the food would make anyone desperate to take a trip themselves.

If you are not one for travel yourself, explore the depths of new places through the imaginative and observant eyes of Norman Coutts. His story is one of family, friendship, and self-discovery. While Coutts mentions being maybe a bit older than the typical travelers, The Naked Sailor proves that you’re never too old to grow or to enjoy all the life has to offer. 

Thank you for reading Elizabeth Zender’s book review of The Naked Sailor by Norman Coutts! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: The Naked Sailor appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski

A touching essay collection of an adopted home

Award-winning mystery author Michael Pronko explores the mysteries of Tokyo and his life there as an English professor in Tokyo Tempos, a lively assortment of essays that continues the multivolume memoir begun with Beauty and Chaos. 

In this collection, Pronko reflects on his much beloved adopted city where he has lived, taught, and written for more than twenty years. A professor of American Literature at Meiji Gakuin University, Pronko is the author of the acclaimed Detective Hiroshi mystery series, whose adventures are all set in Tokyo. For this fourth installment of his Tokyo Moments series, Pronko seeks to “bring Tokyo out of the background to see it for what it is. I want to ground myself in the city’s sense-seducing power.” And sense-seducing it is.

The essays are divided into four parts that detail Pronko’s charming observations of daily life in Tokyo, its mercurial seasons and rituals, the moments he calls “small intensities,” and his experiences instructing Japanese students as an American. Early on, Pronko suggests there is an “urgency” in his chronicling of those everyday experiences, where he hopes to “rediscover the meanings I found and still find before they get lost forever.”

From there, Pronko offers a medley of vignettes that are as eclectic as they are eloquent. In “Train Time,” he turns an ordinary train trip into an exercise in people studying, where he is convinced each traveler is an uncharted story (“the train is a bookstore filled with stories being lived.”) Then Pronko shifts into a more sustained soliloquy on the challenges foreigners experience navigating Tokyo culture and society, where survival depends on learning the Japanese rules and practices in “Tokyo Open and Closed.” 

Pronko’s scope encompasses both the mundane and the majestic. In “Photograph Everything,” he develops his idea that taking photos in Japan serves a higher, less narcissistic purpose than one might imagine. “Touching is rarer in Japan than in Western and most Asian cultures. When touch is socially restrained, photos bring people into contact.” He calls this obsession for photographing everything “a kind of national smiling therapy … that is no small deal in a country with one of the highest suicide rates in the world.”

After he announces he can see Mount Fuji from his backyard, he dispels some of that glamor with how the iconic volcano looks today, with “even more factories…puffing out smoke” encroaching upon the volcano’s broad plain.

His other essays paint a vibrant portrait of Tokyo in springtime with the arrival of its heralded cherry blossom season in March and April, where “everyone in Japan stops to look at the same thing.” If he cannot replicate the smell of its wind-blown blossom petals, Pronko comes close with his almost romantic rendering of this seasonal and societal ritual, calling cherry blossom season “the annual wedding of humans and beauty.” 

Amusing entries on the “thermal” divide Tokyo endures every summer, where the “brain-stunning” heat of the outdoors is miserably matched by polar vortex air conditioning indoors, leads to Pronko’s conclusion that the “Japanese always claim to love harmony, but temperature is one issue on which no one ever agrees.”

Pronko’s concluding section is a mélange of thoughtful pieces describing his more meaningful moments as a teacher, from giving a wedding speech at a student’s wedding to mourning the death of another alongside her classmates. Through his students, Pronko says “I get to see their lives, and through the story of their lives, I see Japan.”

Tokyo Tempos is a charming, unaffected, and yet profoundly philosophical collection of essays on the colorful chaos that is Tokyo. 

Thank you for reading Peggy Kurkowski’s book review of Tokyo Tempos by Michael Pronko! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: Tokyo Tempos appeared first on Independent Book Review.