Customer Reviews

The Possibility of Everything

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Hope Edelman's new memoir reminded me a lot of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia in ways good and bad. I liked "The Possibility of Everything" more than "Eat, Pray, Love" and I predict Edelman's book will strike people in many different ways depending on their personal point of view and expectations as readers.

Here's the good news: Edelman writes beautifully. At times I wanted to weep both from Edelman's prose and the anguish she felt as she and her husband struggled to deal with their intense three-year-old daughter, in the midst of their intense lives. Reading as a mother, the feeling of fear and panic that 'there is something wrong with my child and I don't know what' resonated with me on an elemental level.

Edelman's honesty also shines through--she is not afraid to lay bare her own inadequacies, or fears about life, parenting, and her marriage.

However, I am just not sure that there is enough to this story to merit a 320+ page memoir. Hope's daughter Maya was having trouble and acting out, manifested by her obnoxious imaginary friend "Bad Dodo;" the family went to Belize for about a week, received two sessions of shamanic healing; Hope had some profound insights and her daughter got a lot better. Around chapter 11 out of 13, I was wondering if it the detailed story would all pay off. I really liked the book's conclusion, but the hour-by-hour coverage of the trip was too much buildup for me.

Part of the trouble was that the character of Hope was really irritating as she interacted with Maya. It seemed like the little girl was looking for some leadership in her family that her anxious, overly attached mother and workaholic father were unwilling to provide. I can't recall either parent ever really setting a limit for Maya. Hope was too busy being angry on her daughter's behalf for any perceived slight (like when people were put off by Maya's tantrums). Everyone seemed to walk on eggshells around Maya, hoping to avoid setting her off. This was epitomized by the family's visit to the ancient ruins in Guatemala, when little Maya got ticked off that everyone kept saying "her name" all day long. The tour guide ended up working around it, trying to avoid saying MAYA in the MAYA city, which seemed absolutely ridiculous.

Edelman does achieve valuable insight into these issues, and healing in the end, but along the way I often felt like I was trapped in someone else's uncomfortable family vacation.

Although this book is well written, as a mother of teenagers, I kept going back and thinking I missed something. I couldn't for the life of me understand why the mom was so freaked out by the imaginary friend. The whole premise of the book seemed ridiculous to me. I felt sad that such a normal part of childhood had to be twisted into something pathological even after assurances from the teacher and doctor. It seems like such a shame that the author was so disconnected from her child and not enjoying those young precious years. The idea that a trip to Belize was in order seems like the epitome of over kill. These folks did need some time off but sitting around reading, playing and slowing down to listen to their child would have been a whole lot cheaper and just as effective. Alternative healing is wonderful from whatever culture you choose, I just didn't see what they were trying to "cure". There is no shortcuts to just plain conscious parenting, children will act out when their needs are not met and it can be terribly inconvenient but easier to meet them when they are 3 then have them go unmet and have a really angry and troubled 18 year old. It worries me that so many people connected with the author and her anxieties, it seems to me a symptom of a really disconnected, overworked, media saturated, fear based society. I'm glad the author could some how find her way to faith but clearly most of society is not in a position to take such a radical departure from their regular lives. We need more stories from all the mothers who every day are balancing parenting, trusting their instincts, and making difficult choices to put careers on hold all without any family support or hired help!

Hope Edelman admittedly lives in high anxiety encompassing all areas of her life, including her marriage, all other relationships and her child rearing practices. When imaginary friend Dodo arrives in the life of her precocious three year old daughter, Maya, and seems connected with increased bad behavior and tantrums ("meltdowns"), Edelman's anxiety goes into high gear as she decides that Dodo may signal the onset of mental or emotional problems for Maya. Assurances from friends, relatives and health professionals about the normalcy and harmlessness of imaginary friends at Maya's age have no calming effect. Edelman quickly finds herself applying a folk remedy suggested by Maya's nanny, who thinks Dodo is an evil spirit.

Stressed out, Edelman agrees to vacation in Belize and acquiesces in her husband's idea of taking Maya to a shaman/healer there. Her husband already believes that the universe holds more than we can know or explain, but Edelman is a self-proclaimed believer only in what can be proved to the senses. The trip starts poorly because Maya is physically ill, and the incompetent airline so botches things that Maya gets very little sleep for two days, thus insuring irritability and bad behavior. The rest of the trip is somewhat better, although it is chronicled in unnecessary length and detail.

Two trips to shamen occur. The first goes badly, but Edelman seems to blame herself for this. Edelman is impressed with the second shaman, Dr. Rosita Arvigo, who was born and raised in the US. She combines herbal expertise with traditional spiritual approaches (prayer and simple ritual when applying the remedy). After treatment, Maya's behavior improves markedly and she banishes Dodo herself without much ado. Dodo's whole career from arrival to demise is about three months; and Maya herself both creates and destroys him, strongly suggesting that she had full control of Dodo throughout, used him as needed and obliterated him when he became counterproductive. Harmless as advertised.

This book is overlong and rambling. It contains a good bit of potted history on the ancient Mayans, some of it practically transcribed from a guide's talk while touring Tikal, the chief Mayan site. The author includes much tedious and repetitive detail on other aspects of the trip as well (such as the disastrous plane trip to Belize). Inside this overweight and ponderous book may be a good thin book trying to get out, but the author prevented its escape.

How well readers like this book I think will depend on two things: The reader's attitude toward magical thinking and the degree of sympathy one has for Edelman's endless self-involvement and quick self-pity. I am not much on magical thinking although the placebo effect in medicine is proof enough that it can occasionally be effective. As for Edelman, this is her book in every sense. She not only wrote it; she is its main and only star, assisted by a few bit players. Husband Uzi, for example, is portrayed with no more depth than is the resort owner in Belize. Her view and opinions, and above all her endless anxiety, dominate.

I think there might be an interesting story in this book, but I couldn't find it. Edelman is a self-acknowledged super-anxious person, and this book really seems to be all about that. Unfortunately, the book is so full of her that if you don't like the self she portrays (and I didn't, much), then the book will fail for you.

More than a story about Maya's invisible friend, this is a story of a mother over-reacting, and then blaming herself for every little thing that goes wrong. She also structured the book in a way that made it hard to sort out what was going on. Here's an example: the trip to Belize was botched by the airlines, and Maya arrived there tired and sick. However, the early descriptions of Maya being sick in Belize are provided without any explanation, so it initially appears that they reasons they came to Belize had to do with this sickness, when in fact, the sickness had nothing to do with the decision to come to Belize.

The story is simple: Maya develops an invisible friend, the invisible friend is pretty strong-willed and unfriendly, Edelman freaks out and starts worrying about Maya's sanity and future, the family decides to go to Belize for a shamanistic treatment of the invisible friend, and then Maya dismisses the "bad Dodo" while keeping the "good Dodo". Frankly, given the extreme anxiety displayed by her mother (at least by her mother's own account), I'm not surprised that Maya used the invisible friend construction, especially since much of "bad Dodo's" acting out involved hitting her mother. There were times reading the book when I felt an distinct urge to slap the author, too. However, I am not a three-year-old, so I have other ways of expressing my impatience with Edelman (such as not reading any more of her books).

It does seem that the whole process helped Edelman calm down some, which can only be good for her and her family. But I found her so unlikable and so self-indulgent that I basically hated this book.

How far would you be willing to go to separate your child from her/his imaginary friend? I'm not talking about the mostly harmless imaginary friend as in "Family Circus" where "Not Me" does all the bad things - knocking over a vase, writing on the wall, that sort of thing. I'm talking about the sort of imaginary friend that makes you question your child's sanity and wonder what DNA you may have passed on to your child.

I am most familiar with M's Edelman's incredible book "Motherless Daughters". On that basis alone, I picked this book out. And it definitely didn't disappoint.

M's Edelman's 3 year daughter Maya seems like the "normal" child that age. High spirited, imaginative and creative, it's not unusual for a child of that age to have an imaginary friend in lieu of younger siblings. (My younger son had an imaginary friend at that age, too. His name was Aaron Copeland. Nothing like DoDo.) So why worry - the kid will get over it in time. Not for Maya.

Her friend DoDo was beyond mischievous. He didn't want her to eat her food, food she had previously enjoyed. He didn't want her to take her medicine. He didn't want her to get better. That aspect frightened M's Edelman and her husband. It would frighten me to death. So M's Edelman, who was the practical one, only believing what she could see, and her husband make a difficult decision - possibly the only decision left after they had exhausted the alternatives. They decide to take Maya to Mayan healers in Belize.

This book details all the steps involved in such a courageous undertaking. I say it's courageous because few people can admit there might be something beyond what they can see. Few people are willing to trust a healer so completely with something as precious as their child.
Yet they do....

How does it work out? Who really needed to be healed? How does this all play out? M's Edelman writes a detailed memoir of how she came to be in Belize with her family and the far reaching ramifications of that visit.

I recommend this book highly. It's a great read and M's Edelman is a skilled writer. At turns funny, heartbreaking and thought provoking, it is a great read.

Inside the Possibility of Everything there is a really fascinating tale about a little girl (the author's daughter, Maya) who got carried away with another world, but unfortunately, that tale is buried beneath pages ontop of pages of the mother's (the author) rambling. After several chapters of the book, I wanted to find out what happened to the little girl, but I found myself sifting through history, attitude, and annoyances I never requested.

The Possibility of Everything is over 300 pages long and I spent most of those pages begging for the story to be told. The entire tale is infused with the author's relentless anxiety--which she seems to think is just a cute and quirky characteristic. While I believe she means to focus on her daughter, she can't stop talking and thinking about herself. In this particular period (the story takes place in 2000), it seems the author's daughter needs a source of strength and comfort, but the author devotes chapters to nurturing her own, adult-sized neediness.

Furthermore, I could not relate to the author's style of parenting. Every instance of detailed story-telling about her parenting skills--where she seems to be reaching out to the readers for parental support and approval (maybe even admiration)--left me highly annoyed. The author parents without boundaries, and even though Maya's circumstances were unusual, Maya needed boundaries, as all children do. As a parent, I was extremely put off when Edelman categorizes children as "good and easy" or "extraordinary and unique." Edelman acts as if her daughter's bad behavior is a result of the three-year-old being too amazing. I suppose that's easier than taking on your responsibilities as a parent, but I'd call it passing the buck.

She caters to every whim of the three-year-old Maya and she's shocked when the rest of the world finds Maya's behavior inappropriate. I would agree with the rest of the world: No, I don't want your child on the restaurant floor bumping into my table. No, I don't want your child touching the glass objects in my home or dictating what is acceptable to say on my group tour in the Maya ruins. I feel like she could have had control in all of the above situations and I couldn't tolerate the author's position in thinking otherwise.

Even though this story was very much about the daughter, Maya's situation, Hope can't seem to help herself: she twists every aspect of the story until it's completely about her. Hope wonders, at one point in the book, if she's dramatizing Maya's situation for the attention Hope elicits for herself. The answer: absolutely. Not that the situation isn't dramatic, but that she prolongs it the same way she prolongs this book.

And for others who have read this book and are familiar with the story, let me ask you: Where is the detail when she visits the shaman? She writes and speaks of every other anxiety and location using pain-staking and descriptive detail, but when she gets to the world-famous shaman's office, she's frustratingly vague about her daughter's symptoms. She's consumed with more thoughts about herself.

In the end, Maya recovers and I'm glad to hear it. I'm frustrated that I needed to visit Belize and hear the minute-by-minute vacation details to find that conclusion, but I was glad after I unearthed it. In my opinion, Maya healed but Hope Edelman's anxieties and self-absorption live on. It is misleading to list this book as spiritual or new age because it is tainted with opinion, doubt, and ego. All the best.

I'm not much of one for memoirs, mostly because their authors seem more interested in dwelling on the meaning of every moment they've lived than in actually living well in the present. This author is no exception; she is, however, quite a talented writer.

One thing I'm struck by is how well she manifests the modern mother neuroses: a self-involvement so grand and deep-rooted that she's primarily concerned with what her daughter's behavior says about her parenting, while her daughter's actual needs get overlooked.

Let me start by saying how much I like the title. It's the best statement in the entire book. The book itself is a serious, dedicated work that looks for answers in all the right places. However, when it looks into a moment in time or a spacious point in the present, it does not see as much as it could.

You will like this book if you are a left-brain, intellectual, doubting, not keen on faith, skeptical, reason-oriented, hard-working person, not big on feelings, who believes that reality is found primarily in your five senses. The book may even be a bit of a joy to you, as you follow along with the travels, travails, situations and ruminations of its author.

However, for those readers who have a little to a lot of knowledge about faith, intuition, dreams, creating your own reality, alternative forms of healing and quantum physics, and are definitely more right brain in your thinking, this book will seem like a shallow, painfully difficult throwback to the late 70's, early 80's. You will wonder where Hope Edelman has been all her life.

Well we all inhabit our own little worlds, do we not? And that means that we see what we want to see. This explains Edelman's spiritual myopia. Also, resistance to things we do not understand nor have much control over is bound to send us into denial. The left-brained ones hook their belief system into, "seeing is believing," while the right- brained ones go with "believing is seeing." Both are right, but the righter ones are the right-brained ones because the possibility of everything can only be accessed through the right brain functions. One of life's little ironies that is unconsciously highlighted in the book.

I won't exhaust you out with a diatribe of the events that occurred in this book, suffice it to say that a mother went to extremes to ensure that her child's psyche conformed to western medicine's mental health standards - for adults. A child's imaginary friend became the fall-guy for the three-year old's ill temper, but this was only a temporary situation because the author believes that intervention may have been the cure.

I expected this book to keep my interest but it did not. In fact, I was thoroughly aggravated before I was 1/3 of the way through the book. Why? As the mother of four children (1 son, three daughters, now grown), I found the author's worries about her daughter expressed in her prose bordering on a "nervous Nelly on Red Bull" demeanor that impacted me by further fraying my gossamer nerve threads the likes of which occur when fingernails scrape a chalkboard. In other words, either the woman needs to chuck the Starbucks and get a healthy dose of meditation and yoga, or I will have no other choice but to believe that her concerns and behavior are too contrived. It is common knowledge that sometimes children conjure up imaginary friends under various circumstances. Children also go through stages including the "terrible twos" and abhorrent adolescence. It seemed to me that the cause (of the dire distress that led to the extreme of seeking out a shaman in Belize) did not warrant the effect. It seemed more likely (to me) that the author needed writing material and tried to turn a rather commonplace occurrence in childhood into a all-out odyssey with a message - sometimes the mystical or numinous experience by its very nature does not lend itself to qualitative or quantitative descriptors. In more simple jargon, it is hard for the rational mind to believe that which is not apparently rational. Leap of faith? Well, there are many superstitions and beliefs in countless traditions, rituals etc. all over the world that have ascribed to them much more profound "miracles" than the disappearance of an imaginary childhood friend.
I haven't read any other books by this author, so perhaps I am just one of those readers to whom this author's style does not appeal.

This book was too long and undisciplined. The author sets no limits for her daughter and sets no limits on her own long-winded anxieties. If I were an editor, I would have cut the book to one-third of its length, if I chose to publish it at all.

I was hoping to like this book. I traveled to Belize with my family last summer, and I have dealt with a special needs child for years now. But I found that this writer had no real insights about Belize, settling for the shallowest type of travelogue. She made no real effort to understand the people of Belize because she was too pre-occupied with herself (and parenthetically, her daughter). Her anxieties and need for control became more and more annoying as they were repeated through the book. Even her understanding of her own little girl seemed shallow and scattered. She rarely bothered to enjoy her child and truly participate with her in playful times together. By the end of the book, I disliked the author for the way she parents and for the way she wastes her readers' time with tale after tale of the discomfort other travelers had for her daughter's misbehavior. She does not truly believe in the possibility of everything; she just has not decided what she does believe and lets herself be blown hither and yon by the beliefs of others. I will not read anything more by this author.