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42 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must read!, August 17, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
If you are middle aged and dealing with children who are adolescents or pre- (or post-) adolescents and are wondering why your life is so complicated and longing for a life that is simpler and more meaningful, then this is definitely the book for you! Approaching her 50's, Katrina Kennison suddenly finds herself overcome with longing for a life where her family is more connected and not so overwhelmed by appointments and schedules and materialism and all those issues which make a family that was close when the children were young into a family of strangers when the children grow into adolescents. She decides to uproot her family from Boston back to her childhood home in New Hampshire and falls in love with a summer cabin on 80 acres of land with a view of mountains and a pond, stream and woodlands. The cabin proves unlivable and eventually needs to be torn down for a new dwelling but, during the summer her family lives there without the benefit of computers and other accepted city distractions, they learn how to become a family again. At first resistant, they eventually slow down, read books, play catch, explore the land, watch the stars, and generally have a wonderful time enjoying their new lives. Throughout the ensuing few years of dealing with the potential empty nest, Katrina comes to find herself, find a new occupation, new friends, a new life altogether. She finds the meaning in her existence--a meaning that had been missing in their former busy city lives.
Although the prose is beautiful, it could be edited...that is the only fault I could find with this book. It is a heart-wrenching, speak-to-the gut book for any woman (or person) in their 40's, 50's or 60's, with children or without; to anyone who has questioned the meaning of their busy life and wondered what it would be like to live differently, to live a more simple, slower existence.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough--it has changed my life and the way that I look at and address my college-age children. Instead of hanging on to them, I now see that they need to find their own paths through life and this book has helped me to let go and to learn to find meaning in myself and my life as more than a mother. It is long but beautifully written; in places it is not easy to hear what the author has to say; but, believe me...every word of hers has the kind of value that will change your life.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Gift of the End of an Ordinary Day, June 24, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Those incredibly full to bursting days of young parents and young children, the days that some days you thought would never end eventually do. And then you are sad.
"It is of course, a universal drama- children grow up, they leave home, clocks tick in empty bedroom, and untouched gallons of milk turn sour in the fridge because no one's there to drink them..."
You miss the person you had been, the very busy mom full of schedules, carpools, school events and suddenly one day your children are grown and you are done. "I missed the person I had been for them too, the younger, more capable mother who read aloud for hours, stuck raisin eyes into bear-shaped pancakes, created knight's amour from cardboard and duct tape. Certainly my talents didn't seem quite so impressive anymore, my company not as desirable as it once had been."
Now what? And "in an almost heartbreaking sense of just how short life really is, and how incomprehensible," you try to get on with the new life, the life with grown children.
The sudden impulse to do something crazy just because you realize time is fleeting and soon you may not be able. So Katrina Kenison jettisons into a house purchase; "And we're here because my more sensible husband, in his desire to please me, is willing to go along with- if not embrace- a vision he most definitely doesn't share."
All the minutiae of Of Katrina Kenison's life will differ from yours but the angst, the joy, the fulfillment, and the yearning will ring true.
This book hit me at that point where I am the mother who is almost done raising my children and wondering, "Is there life after this?" Kenison encouragingly writes that there is, but don't forget who you were and who you will become. And rejoice in that.
All of this was wonderful reading in the book and then suddenly a little more than half way through it just fell apart.
Katrina Kenison became tedious and I began skimming the pages to get to the end. The book that had started with such promise had lost its allure and I was done.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Maybe I'll appreciate this book in 25 years, October 8, 2010
I cannot wait for this book to be over. This is yet another memoir that is mostly a diary turned into a book without sufficient editing.
The book followed a tiresome and repetitive formula, something like:
My life isn't exactly what I thought it would be. My sons aren't what I thought they would be. My house isn't what I thought it would be. And then the message, which is repeated over and over, is to embrace life, to live in the moment, to appreciate what you have instead of what you hoped you would have.
That is a nice message. But it's as if the author has to learn it 40 times throughout the book, and we the reader are dragged along through every banal epiphany.
After reading the comments, it seems like this book does resonate with people who are going through the exact same thing as she is. I'm in a different place in my life, so perhaps that has something to do with my dislike for the book.
She also comes across as being pretty self-absorbed and selfish. She makes huge decisions despite her entire family's protest in the name of self-growth. It seems like a problem of "wherever you go, there you are" to me. As in, she can change locations and homes as often as she wants, but she's still going to be herself. Which as far as I can tell, would be exhausting. I would want a break from it, too.
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