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Category: Relationships

Review & Interview: "Family Constellations: A Practical Guide to Uncovering the Origins of Family Conflict" by Joy Manne

[ 4 ] May 23, 2010

Reviewed by Erin N.

Dr. Manné, Buddhist Psychologist, has written a guide detailing the method of therapy created by Bert Hellinger: Family Constellation. This method operates on the premise that all behavior patterns are the result of the families we are born into.  The constellation method claims that each family has an “energy field” and that everyone within it holds a unique position. This position determines our ability to cope with stress, feel happiness, engage in healthy relationships, etc. This energy field that holds all the family members in place is created by the family’s history, thus the actions of previous generations (even if there had been no direct contact) influence an individual’s place in this energy field.  The constellation method helps clients discover their place in the energy field, why they are placed where they are, and how to heal from any damage brought about by it.

Family Constellations provides a great deal of case studies to illustrate how this method works.  Despite the disclaimer at the end of the book stating that “no method can resolve all problems,” Dr. Manné’s book provides details on how the constellation method can be used to help a client deal with death, divorce, war, incest, adoption, as well as other incidents. The Foreword, written by Bert Hellinger, claims that this book was “long-awaited” and that “it is such easy and beautiful reading.” Hellinger goes on to say that this book provides many “hints on how to make our lives and are relationships richer and more fulfilling.” It certainly is very detailed and easy to understand, even to those whose background is not in psychotherapy.

Family Constellations provides a unique view on the causes and solutions to many of life’s problems.

 Erin fell in love with the written word as a small child and subsequently spent most of her life happily devouring literature.  She works as a freelance news, marketing, and technical writer.  Erin lives just outside of Cleveland, Ohio with her husband, children, and grandchildren.

Interview with Joy Manne

As you state throughout the book, the “constellation method” was created by Bert Hellinger, a German psychoanalyst. Since Hellinger has written a great deal of literature about this method, what is the purpose of your book?
Manne: Hellinger says in his foreword to my book that it is a long-awaited introduction. Its purpose is to be accessible and it is succeeding. The book, which first came out in French, has become the introduction of choice for French constellators. Hellinger’s books are inspiring and irreplaceable, and they are written for professionals. Many of them are transcriptions and discussions of constellations and their integration done in seminars. My book presents the rules and patterns that govern the family system, allowing readers to understand their own personal position within that system, and thus avoid doing harm to themselves and others in their family and outside it.

Delving into the controversial subjects, you state that the constellation method has revealed that homosexuality is caused by an individual identifying with a family member of the opposite sex. Does this imply that homosexuality can be “cured?
Manne: Homosexuality may be caused by an individual identifying with and trying unconsciously to replace a family member (for example, for a man, his sister or a mother or grandmother who died young and who hasn’t been mourned). Illnesses too are caused through an individual identifying with a family member of the same or of a different sex. Homosexuality is respected. Illnesses are respected.

This is a method that avoids judgments and focuses on the healing that is revealed by truth, when before there has only been pain, and no love. Healing does not mean not being homosexual. Healing does not mean not being ill. Healing comes from seeing and experiencing the underlying dynamic, integrating it and coming to peace with it.

Judgments have no place in constellations. Family Constellations is absolutely not a means of controlling and changing other people.

Your PhD is in Buddhist psychology, what exactly is that?
Manne: My PhD is in the Theravada Buddhist texts in Pali, a language related to Sanskrit, and concerns textual issues (philology) and also the psychology (case histories in particular) in these texts. It was awarded by Utrecht University in Holland and has been published as a series of articles. It has no formal title bestowed by the university, so I call it “Buddhist Psychology” to give people an idea of what I studied, what my specialist field is, and what the most important influence in my life is.

You regularly conduct the family constellations in Switzerland and Poland. Do you plan to branch out to other countries? Are there other constellation practitioners available in other countries?
Manne: I love this work, so if I’m invited by reliable organizers I will be pleased to travel to work in other countries. Yes, there are organizations in many countries now. These can easily be found through Google.

This book was provided free of any obligation by North Atlantic Books. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Blog Tour: "Dead End Gene Pool" by Wendy Burden

[ 5 ] April 25, 2010

Please join Wendy Burden, author of Dead End Gene Pool, as she tours the blogosphere with TLC Book Tours!

Reviewed by Scott B.

This book creates a good argument for a hefty estate tax — something along the lines of 99 percent. Dead End Gene Pool is told by Wendy Burden (a seventh-generation Vanderbilt descended from the Commodore himself), mainly in her formative years. Wendy paints a brutally honest portrait of the life of the super, super rich, mostly through vignettes concerning her paternal grandparents, Ambassador and Mrs. William A. M. Burden Jr., and her often absentee mother.

William A. M. Burden III, Wendy’s father, committed suicide in 1962 when she was six. From then on, Wendy, her older brother, Will, and younger brother, Edward, born almost nine months to the day after his father’s death, were mandated to spend at least two weekends a month with their grandparents. Leslie Hamilton, Wendy’s mother, who disappeared for three years right after Edward’s birth, was cut out of the will and then spent the rest of her healthy life traveling the world searching for the perfect tan—which she achieved—and the perfect bedroom partner—which she really did not. Nannies and other assorted staff members took care of the children much of the time.

Burdenland, as her grandparents’ world was called, existed in an apartment at 63rd and 5th (with fourteen bathrooms), an estate in Mount Kisco, New York, Hobe Sound, Florida, and Mount Desert Island, Maine. Put together every TV episode of Julia Child’s The French Chef and you could gain an understanding of the daily menu in Burdenland, complete with an army of help to serve it. If grandfather “Popsie” wanted turtle soup for dinner the next day, for example, he simply told his secretary to order the tortoise from wherever in the world it was in season—and fly it in! However, Wendy was much more fond of her loving—and humorously flatulent—grandmother.

The life of the “goddamn spoiled rotten” is colored by Wendy’s obsession with the macabre drawings of Charles Addams, the cartoonist who created, yes, the Addams Family. Her tales of anatomical experiments on dead—mostly—animals, the home-made guillotining of dolls and such, and imaginative musings of murderous revenge on servants and family members are relatively palatable compared to Wendy’s observations that can only be termed “too much information.” A zinger here and there concerning sightings or near sightings of various genitalia and/or bodily functions or smells can add the right amount of spice, but this reader was on the verge of vomiting by about page 185.

Wendy gives us many moments of laughter among the ultimate sadness that clouds the world of her family, including a few suicides (father, maternal grandfather, staff), addiction (mother, brother, brother, uncle, uncle, grandfather, grandmother), and the pathetic figure that is her mother.

The author alone seems to emerge sane and healthy from this compelling story of excess and morass, which only a genealogical chart and photos of the principals could have made more vivid.

Check out a great interview/article about Wendy in the New York Times, and follow along on her blog tour! Her website can be found here.

Scott, now a copy editor by trade, is a once-and-future Latin teacher. He pursues his passions for brain plasticity, jazz piano, and golf in southeast Massachusetts. He lives alone with Cicero, Shakespeare, Mozart, and Ella Fitzgerald.

A review copy was provided free of any obligation by Gotham. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review & Giveaway: "Glorious" by Bernice L. McFadden

[ 139 ] April 24, 2010

Reviewed by Vera (Luxury Reading)

Set in the 1920′s-1930′s and shifting between southern and northern states, Glorious explores the lives of African American authors through the eyes of a fictional character, Easter Bartlett.

After a series of family disasters, Easter Bartlett leaves her home in Waycross, Georgia at a young age with no certain destination in mind. As years go by, Easter “flies” through jobs and locations: an assistant to a vaudeville dancer, Rain, in a traveling circus, a teacher in a Church-owned school and so on. Her travels are propelled by betrayals – which are often caused by unscrupulous behavior on her part – that cause her to move on. Through it all, Easter’s constant is her writing and her ability to create beauty on paper at a time when most assumed that ‘colored’ folk were all illiterate.

Following a scandal at a school where she taught, Easter winds up in Harlem on the eve of the Harlem Renaissance. It is in Harlem where Easter’s talent becomes apparent to others, due in part to her writing for a local newspaper. With a rich benefactor, Meredith Tomas, backing her work, Easter seems poised for glory as the rubs elbows with the likes of Langston Hughes; she looks to have a piece of the notoriety awarded others by the Renaissance. But, in a flash, Easter’s world comes tumbling down and the final, irreversible betrayal sends her back to her meager beginnings.

Glorious is a story that needs to be told, one of the terrible inequality experienced by African American authors despite their supposed freedoms. In the betrayal that affects her writing career, Easter has no recourse and no credibility simply because she’s black and her “opponent” is wealthy and white.

At times, I wished that the novel was more fleshed out. I felt that just as I was becoming interested in a particular story line and the surrounding characters, that part of Easter’s life would abruptly end and the story would move on to the next segment. These transitions felt too brief and there was much that was left to the imagination, which some may find to be a positive aspect. However, McFadden does an immense job of incorporating historical figures and events with fictional ones, blending the distinctions to the point where Easter Bartlett feels as real as pianist Fats Waller, or the shipping heiress Nancy Cunard. The speed at which the story moves can be off-putting at times is beneficial at others. I believe that Easter’s life was meant to read as a whirlwind of events, and have a sort of poof-and-its-gone quality to it, and the novel’s brevity definitely contributes to this effect.

Please visit Bernice McFadden’s website for more information on her and her books.

Giveaway:
I have 2 autographed copies of Glorious to give away, courtesy of the author!
Mandatory entry: Please comment on this post with your e-mail address. 

Extra entries (please post each entry separately, i.e. 2 posts for subscribing):
- Subscribe via email. You must verify the subscription. (2 entries)
- Enter another current giveaway and tell me which one you entered (1 entry each)
- Share this giveaway on a social network of your choice. Click the “share” button below (1 entry each)
- Become a fan on Facebook (2 entries)

This giveaway is open to U.S. residents only. Deadline to enter is midnight on May 12th.

Review and giveaway copies were provided free of any obligation by Bernice L. McFadden. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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"Secrets Girls Keep" by Carrie Silver-Stock

[ 4 ] April 21, 2010

Reviewed by Erin N.

Modern American girls grow up in a world that is so fundamentally different than that of their male counterparts. As a result, most girls end up with a feeling of isolation within a greater society. Trying to “fit in”, struggling with self worth, and discovering her own identity leads many a young woman to hide her real thoughts and to keep secrets (even dangerous ones) from those who can help, and even from herself. Whether the secret involves sexual harassment, an eating disorder, family tragedies, or depression, American girls almost seem to be “trapped by the cult of secrecy” that is the norm of the female society.

Secrets Girls Keep: What Girls Hide (& Why) and How to Break the Stress of Silence addresses this tendency to keep quiet about some of the most important things in a growing girl’s life and addresses the underlying issues that cause the secrecy. The book is full of actual accounts from real girls from many walks of life. Their problems range across the realms of self esteem, boys and dating, friends, bullying, school, alcoholic family members, money, internet socialization, depression, drugs, eating disorders, cutting, and teen pregnancy (to name a few). 

Within each category, Carrie Silver-Stock takes the reader through a list of seven tips that can be used to deal with the problem underlying the secret at hand. These tips include using your gut (intuition), discovering and using your strengths, choosing and respecting the right friends, and so on. Silver-Stock illustrates how these tips can be adapted to all situations and how breaking the secrecy cycle will help girls develop into fully functioning young women.

Carrie Silver-Stock is a licensed social worker who has spent many years working with young girls struggling with the varying issues that affect their development and futures. She is also the founder of a social networking site called girlswithdreams.com that offers advice and support for teenage girls. Secrets Girls Keep provides insight and solutions for many of life’s struggles and is a must read for any young woman or any parent/guardian of a teenage girl.

Please visit the Secrets Girls Keep website and Carrie Silver-Stock’s website for more information.

Erin fell in love with the written word as a small child and subsequently spent most of her life happily devouring literature.  She works as a freelance news, marketing, and technical writer.  Erin lives just outside of Cleveland, Ohio with her husband, children, and grandchildren.

This book was provided free of any obligation by PR by the Book. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Blog Tour & Giveaway: "The Girls from Ames" by Jeffrey Zaslow

[ 196 ] April 19, 2010

Please join Jeffrey Zaslow, author of The Girls from Ames, as he tours the blogosphere with TLC Book Tours!


Reviewed by Krista C.

 I have a fantastic group of women friends who are very similar to the group of women featured in Jeffrey Zaslow’s latest book, The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and Friendship. Most of the friendships in our group, dubbed the ‘Spinster Sisters’, date from my freshman year in college. Even though the main group of ‘girls’ featured in Zaslow’s book have known each other since their tween years, I could relate to their stories because I’ve shared many similar experiences during the years the Spinster Sisters have been together.   
Call me a skeptic, but I wondered whether a man could accurately describe the life events and inner workings of a group of women. That’s no knock on Zaslow. He co-authored The Last Lecture with Randy Pausch so he’s proven that he can write a compelling human interest story. However, I just kept coming back to the fact that he was a man. Would he get the essence of the “girls” in all their glory?
    
 ‘Yes he did!’   
Zaslow spent time introducing each of the “girls”.  I felt like I knew each one of them.  He details the complicated connections that the girls form and reform with each other as they mature from 12 year-olds through to middle age. I didn’t grow up in the Ames, Iowa but the journey that these women shared rang true for me.  
The book poignantly relates the shared sadness after the death of one of the “girls”, and illustrates how the power of the group can support another “girl” while she battles cancer.  These women are each successful on the divergent paths their lives have taken, but they continue to enrich each other by carving out time each year to stay connected. In these jealously guarded hours together they can be their authentic selves surrounded by friends who call them on anything that is less than authentic.   
The Girls from Ames was interesting and insightful. I think that women understand the value this type of support system has in their lives. It pays dividends in many unforeseen ways. Sadly, I don’t think that men experience these dynamics with their ‘man-cave’ friends. Perhaps, after reading this book, men will be more understanding when the women in their lives insist that they have to take the time to visit their own group of “girls”.  

 My teenaged niece once commented about my group of girlfriends, “Spinsters Rock!”
  
 It’s no surprise to me that, The Girls from Ames is a rocking good story.

 Win 1 of 10 copies of The Girls from Ames in TLC’s Book Club of the Month contest until April 30th! 

Please visit The Girls from Ames site and follow along with the blog tour! The “girls” also made a great video to correspond with the paperback release of the book. 

Giveaway
I have 1 copy of The Girls from Ames to give away, courtesy of the publisher!

Mandatory entry: Please comment on this post with your e-mail address. 

Extra entries (please post each entry separately, i.e. 2 posts for subscribing):
- Subscribe via email. You must verify the subscription. (2 entries)
- Blog about this giveaway (5 entries)
- Enter another current giveaway and tell me which one you entered (1 entry each)
- Share this giveaway on a social network of your choice. Click the “share” button below (1 entry each)
- Become a fan on Facebook (2 entries)

This giveaway is open to U.S. and Canada residents only. Deadline to enter is midnight on May 4th.


Review and giveaway copies were provided free of any obligation by Gotham. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review & Giveaway: "Between Friends" by Kristy Kiernan

[ 0 ] April 2, 2010

Reviewed by Vera (Luxury Reading)

 Friends since childhood, Ali and Cora are each other’s confidants and shoulders to lean on when the going gets tough. They are also joined together by an unusual bond: when Ali and her husband Benny were having trouble getting pregnant, Cora donated her eggs and is the biological mother of their 15-year-old daughter Letty. Letty always knew the truth – thanks in part to the framed magazine excerpts about the arrangement – and having children of her own has always been the last thing on free-spirited Cora’s mind.

Diagnosed with a potentially fatal hereditary condition, Cora returns to the States after teaching seminars across the globe and dreads the difficult conversation with her best friend. Ali has a revelation of her own: she has kept the remaining embryos frozen and is finally ready to try for another child. Overshadowing their dueling news is Letty, whose reckless behavior lands her in hot water time and time again. The incidents have Benny reeling and drive a wedge between the couple, with Cora stepping in to pick up the slack and provide the support that Letty so desperately needs. Are three parents too many or is it just what Letty needs to survive her difficult adolescence and emerge unscathed?  

Between Friends by Kristy Kiernan hits all the right notes – it’s dramatic without being overly so, it’s heartbreaking without being sappy, and above all, it’s unpredictable. Sixty pages from the end, I was convinced that I had the rest of the novel figured out. I could not have been more wrong. Kiernan’s talent is most apparent in her ability to create characters and situations that are true to life, and in life, there isn’t always a perfect ending. 

For more information, please visit Kristy Kiernan’s website.

Giveaway
I have 5 copies of Between Friends to give away, courtesy of Berkley/NAL!

Mandatory entry: Please comment on this post with your e-mail address. 

Extra entries (please post each entry separately, i.e. 2 posts for subscribing):
- Subscribe via email. You must verify the subscription. (2 entries)
- Blog about this giveaway (5 entries)
- Enter another current giveaway and tell me which one you entered (1 entry each)
- Share this giveaway on a social network of your choice. Click the “share” button below (1 entry each)
- Become a fan on Facebook (2 entries)

This giveaway is open to U.S. and Canada residents only. Deadline to enter is midnight on April 17th.
Review and giveaway copies were provided free of any obligation by Berkley/NAL. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.
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Blog Tour: "Balancing Acts" by Zoe Fishman

[ 0 ] March 31, 2010

Please join Zoe Fishman, author of Balancing Acts, as she tours the blogosphere with TLC Book Tours!

Reviewed by Poppy J.

Balancing Acts begins with four college acquaintances meeting again at a ten year college reunion. Each is looking for love, wanting to find herself and wondering how she will improve the quality of her life. The women are Naomi, Charlie, Bess and Sabine, and they all decide it is time for a change (each for different reasons). Charlie has just the right catalyst for the women when she suggests that they attend her yoga classes and reconnect with themselves and each other. Charlie has opened up a business with a few other partners, and offers yoga classes to the public. Balancing Acts centers on the classes, the women’s different reactions and the new relationships they develop by opening their minds to something new.

The story initially seems to be based on the premise that all of the women are not on the same footing socially and emotionally. In actuality, Bess has designs to write a story about the women to show that they have not followed their dreams and sold out on their plans for the future. Her intention is to show that she has done better than these women have, even though she is pretending to bond with them both in and out of the yoga class.

Throughout Balancing Acts, Bess learns that she is not so unlike the women that she seeks to expose in her article. Each chapter is named for the women featured in the story. They chronicle the lives of the women, and show how they find or reject the idea of love, and describe how they make sense of the fabric of their lives.

Balancing Acts also tracks the progression of the women’s journey towards loving themselves through learning about, performing, and understanding the art of yoga. There are a few predictable turns in the story, but the ending is first rate. I’d recommend this book to women of any age –  it is definitely a winner.

Please visit Zoe Fishman’s website and follow along with her blog tour!

This book was provided free of any obligation by Harper Paperbacks. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review & Giveaway: "Size Eight in a Size Zero World" by Meredith Cagen

[ 0 ] March 27, 2010

Reviewed by Poppy J.

Don’t let the title fool you – Size Eight in a Size Zero World is first and foremost a book about relationships. Size Eight in a Size Zero World features Lindsay, who is married to Grant, with two kids, Kristen and Jake. They live a seemingly superficial life in NYC, with wealthy friends and a lavish lifestyle. Everything changes when Lindsay meets a stranger who makes her swoon. The encounter distracts her from her real life, which looks perfect on the outside, but is far from it on the inside.

Grant is a bully and is verbally abusive to Lindsay. She struggles at her job, and has mean-spirited best friends. The new man in her life appears to take her to new heights, emotionally and later sexually, but it comes at a cost. The story explains how smooth talking Joes can shake you up, then shake you off, and the reader will begin to feel sorry for Lindsay as she discovers the true meaning of infidelity.

The story in Size Eight in a Size Zero World is quite good, but the reader has to get past the long beginning and stick with the book to get the most from the plot. The ending resolves everything, and makes the “sticking” well worth while. Lindsay has heard the lines that many women have heard before, felt the “love” that many women dream of, and suffered the humiliation that some women can readily relate to. The book is steamy in all the right places and is best suited for a mature audience. 

For more information, please visit Meredith Cagen’s website.

After a decade of working in several NYC law departments and teaching, Poppy decided she enjoyed writing full-time. She currently works as a freelance writing consultant, and lives with her husband and sons on the East Coast. 

Giveaway
I have a copy of Size Eight in a Size Zero World to give away, courtesy of the author!

Mandatory entry: Please comment on this post with your e-mail address. 
Extra entries (please post each entry separately, i.e. 2 posts for subscribing):
- Subscribe via email. You must verify the subscription. (2 entries)
- Blog about this giveaway (5 entries)
- Enter another current giveaway and tell me which one you entered (1 entry each)
- Share this giveaway on a social network of your choice. Click the “share” button below (1 entry each)
- Become a fan on Facebook (2 entries)
This giveaway is open to U.S. residents only. Deadline to enter is midnight on April 14th.

Review and giveaway copies were provided free of any obligation by Meredith Cagen. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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