9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Painfully Honest; A Heart on the Page, June 26, 2005
It is easy in a first novel to fall into the trap of preaching, or manufacturing drama. It is easy to create a main character who is, even in her struggles, perfect and saintlike.
Goska creates a character whose journey is sometimes hard to watch, sometimes painful to read. It is not as neat and warm and fuzzy as, say, a pleasant afternoon read for the Oprah crowd. Sometimes her main character is open, honest and giving-- in other moments, she can be a self-ceneterd jerk.
But at all times this woman is real and believable and completely absorbing, and her struggles to find a love and purpose and hope that can fill her up are moving and touching and altogether real.
This is a challenging work, but it is a challenge worth meeting.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This One is a Keeper, February 13, 2004
This review is from: Love Me More: An Addict's Diary (Hardcover)
Why read this book? This beautifully written story is compelling and yet thorny, like a wild rose, with all the lingering after-taste of great poetry. Danusha Goska somehow hammers nails into places in my mind that I never knew I had; yet in other places she plants healing kisses. Nothing is predictable, not the main character, not the plot, not the time progression. This book is a roller-coaster of emotion and experience and thought that you will never forget.
Miraswava had me angry enough to throw the book down, aching enough to pick it back up, and laughing hard enough to draw stares. I am placing "Love Me More" among the Keepers on my shelf. This is definitely a book you will want to keep, because portions of it will haunt your thoughts and force you to go back and read it all again.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Get this book!, February 7, 2004
I first heard of Danusha Goska when she asked if I could set up a reading for her at Boxcar Books, and dropped of a copy of her book to sell on consignment. I was happy to set up a reading for any local author, but after reading Love Me More, I was thrilled!
Love Me More: An Addict's Diary is not at all what it may seem from the title. When I first picked up the novel, I expected, at worst, a self-help book, and at best, a dreary memoir about a woman whose boyfriend doesn't pay enough attention to her. Don't be put off by the title; the book is miles better than those six words could ever express.
Instead, Love Me More is a very multidimensional, far-reaching novel about the healing journey of a complex woman. It is the story of Miroswava Hudak, daughter of Slavic immigrants and survivor of child abuse, and her transformation from an insecure, unmotivated woman to a brilliant teacher who changes the lives of her students.
The first question that any reader of this book will ask is this: to what addiction does the title refer? At first, it seems that Mira's addiction is food, or conversely, dieting. The novel is written as a collection of diary entries, and the diary begins with Mira's diet. At the beginning of the book, Mira thinks and writes about food ("Food is the problem") and her body image ("And so, I am a fat woman") quite a bit. But as the novel progresses, Mira gets a job that she truly loves, teaching a class called "Summer Session for Non-Traditional Students" at Tillman College, and it becomes clear that her real addiction is caring for her students. After her class begins, she writes less and less of food.
One thing that the book made me realize is the universal truth that every person harbors insecurities and ideas of themselves that may be completely different from the reality of their lives. For instance, in the beginning of the book, when Mira is between jobs and spends most of her time alone or with self-righteous, condescending roommates, her diary reflects her as insecure, lonely and somewhat pathetic. But once she moves into her own apartment, makes new friends and begins teaching again, it is clear that she is in fact confident, personable and an inspiration to her students.
Mira's job makes her contemplate the differences between those students classified as "Non-Traditional" (read: non-white, from a different country, not of normal college-age, etc.) and the "normal" students at the college. She even goes as far as to list off historical and fictional characters, and whether or not they would be placed in the SSNoS program: "Mao Tse-tung? Yeah. I think mostly just because he was so fat, and he had rotten teeth." She acknowledges that she herself would have belonged in the program. Often she feels just as lost as her students, as they grasp for the words to translate their thoughts onto paper, and struggle with grammar. Though Mira mentions several times that she has a college degree, at one point she claims to be illiterate. As she witnesses the beauty and depth of her students' writing, she realizes these qualities in herself.
Throughout Love Me More are excerpts from Mira's childhood, which shadow her present life with a sense of inferiority. It is clear that Mira strives to "save" others - animals, children, her students - as a way of healing her childhood self. As she remembers and records more and more of her past, she begins to question the reality of her memory, and of the words she writes on the page: "What I know is true is different from what the page tells me." This explains a lot when applied to self image. What we know is true, the reality of our lives, is sometimes very different from our own negative self-image.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and was very impressed by Ms. Goska's reading at Boxcar Books on February 6. It's wonderful to be able to read such an amazing book written by someone in my own community!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
