Title: Love, Life, & God: Getting Past the Pain by Renee Atler
Review:
Love, Life & God is a collection of the author's personal life experiences, interspersed with poems and occasional song lyrics. It's written in a chronological memoir style with a great deal of detail in the names, times, and places recollected in the stories. The level of detail suggests that Alter had been painstakingly recording her experiences over the course of many years, as opposed to simply recalling events when she sat down to write a book.
A substantial portion of this book focuses on Alter's health challenges, which are extensive. She describes how they all came about, how they evolved, and the measures she and her doctors took to address them. Those measures include myriad prescription drugs, which she discusses as alternately helpful and harmful. Throughout all these circumstances, she makes an attempt to show how God was looking out for her or teaching her or guiding her. In that way, the book has an emphasis on spirituality.
There are many books out there that detail authors' struggles with all manner of ailments, including cancer, drug addiction, and mental illness. Frankly, this reviewer doesn't usually have much interest in those types of books. I get the impression that they're primarily cathartic exercises designed to help the authors work out their own personal demons, which is fine.
The place where Alter's book shines is in the chapters where she temporarily forgets her various ailments (and allows the reader to forget them, too) and concentrates on telling stories about people she's encountered throughout her life. She describes many fascinating individuals who lead unusual lives. For instance, Allen lives in the country, keeps chickens, feeds zillions of cats, and works a newspaper route to support himself. Alter offers vivid descriptions of her life with Allen, including funny and informative details about chicken behavior and how someone can feed and care for that many cats. Their concern for all those animals was touching.
This book is a mixed bag. I was depressed by parts (chronic illness) but enjoyed other parts (chickens giving themselves dirt baths). Overall, the message that potential readers should get from this review is "Enter at your own risk." Which, by the way, is also the message that should be posted at the entrance to Allen's chicken/cat farm.
Reviewed by Peter
Love it! Thank you so very much!
ReplyDeleteThank you again for this review. Could you please tell me if someone will be posting the review on Amazon? I tried to do it with a link to your page, but they don't allow these links. I posted your site on "Tom Winton Authors Helping Authors" and another group page as well.
ReplyDeleteAnother comment: After I did the D'Vora Lansky's Book Marketing Challenge, I learned about having a specific target audience who would understand & relate to my books. The book is meant to be read by people who are dealing with similar challenges. I don't think this reader had any and therefor couldn't relate and would find this part rather boring. HOWEVER, I am pleased he enjoyed my stories of people and critters because I was concerned that perhaps I put too much of this in the book -- but now I know it was a great idea!
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