Customer Reviews

This Lovely Life

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

The description of this book is heartbreaking, but I came away from reading it moved, overwhelmed, and possessed by the joy you can only feel in the presence of truth. Forman has been through pain that most of us will never experience -- by taking us with her on that journey, we are able to see her growing through sadness, anger and denial into a warrior, teacher and healer who advocates fiercely for her multiply disabled, but no less beautiful or important child. Through her eyes we are able to learn truths that we might never reach on our own; when she writes, "Even a short life is a whole life; this I have learned," I cried, not with anguish, but with joy.

There is a Zen saying, "If you want to find the path, set fire to your own life." By enduring the flames of her rage, pain, and ultimately love, Forman illuminates truths that will stay with me forever. I am grateful for this book.

Vicki Forman begged to let her micropreemie twins slip away from the unimaginable, and was talked into holding on. This Lovely Life is the story of her and her family's lives for the next two years. The author describes -- without vanity, with unyielding honesty -- how the unimaginable encompasses more, asks more than some parents ever thought they could handle -- and the lessons we all can take from such experiences.

Though her journey is underpinned by strength, love, and acceptance, the realities of the author's son's first two years are often brutal. Thankfully Ms. Forman, like Dickey and Nabokov before her, writes so beautifully that I found myself sighing with pleasure at her prose, even though her generosity and story had me in tears.

Please, read this book.

I have been remiss in reviewing This Lovely Life and it is not from any fault of the book. It is because I have been waiting for the right time to read it. A time where I would be emotionally able to deal with the subject matter of this book. I needed to be sufficiently busy so I could step away from the book if I needed to, cheerful enough so I would not become overwhelmed with sadness and sensitive enough so that I could properly engage with the story.

This Lovely Life was heartbreaking to say the least. It was gut twisting following Vicki through her early days with her twins to the death of her daughter, Ellie, to the treatments her son, Evan, had to go through. I admire Vicki for how strong she was throughout. Even though it is a mother's job to be strong for her children despite all of the obstacles (as my mother says), a woman of weaker stuff would have crumbled under the pressure in the beginning but Vicki just kept trudging on and I really admire her for that. I was also absolutely flummoxed at some of the doctors behavior. They seemed to be more interested in protecting their statistics than the life of a baby. To tell you the truth it made me quite sick.

This book was one of the reading highlights of my year. The writing was beautiful. There is, however, a lot of medical language involved but not so much that you will need to sit with a dictionary. My mother is also a nurse in a hospital nursery, so, I grew up with the terminology and language used in those wards. This is not a book that will be an easy read. It will take a strong emotional investment to be able to fully appreciate this book. It will rip your heart out but the book shows the rewards of loving and fighting for the people we love.

This is not just a book for people who have faced the sorrows of raising a disabled child. It is an amazing, moving, engrossing tale about how we learn to love and accept our children and ourselves, with all our flaws, all our imperfections.

Vicki Forman's memoir of the premature birth of her twins and the heartbreaking events that follow is a story that raises important questions about life and love, modern medicine and motherhood. Written from the heart--a heart shattered and broken by grief--Forman's story is honest and compelling. With a skillful hand, she draws readers into her world weaving a tale that is at once devastating and life-affirming.

In the forward to the book, fellow author Tom Bissell, writes, "This Lovely Life is less a book one reads than a book one experiences, and no one who gives him- or herself to this writer's terrible, beautiful story will ever be the same again."

Winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize, This Lovely Life is a must read, one that will spark important conversations about the sanctity of life and love, and what it truly means to become a parent.

Before I decided to have children I remember speaking to many parents and asking them if parenthood was an endeavor that was worth taking on. They all said something like "oh, you have to do it, it's the best. . . " never alluding to the parts that weren't always the best. Of course, I went ahead and had kids and found out that it was the best. It was the greatest thing I've ever done. It was also the most difficult, the darkest, the most aggravating, the worst.

Reading Vicki Forman's book, you are reminded that you don't really know what voyage you are about the embark on when you start a family. Maybe that is part of the allure? Vicki Forman's book illuminates for the reader a part of the parenting experience that not many people see. The honest, pull no punches way she writes about certain experiences somehow come across as poetic in their brutal reality. Her fervent love for her children is weaved through every page. The raw pain and her families attempt to make sense of it all is palpable. It is an honest, beautiful book.

A profound read. It raises the very serious question of whether or not babies who will never be able to thrive should be kept alive by state-sactioned and scientific means, against the wishes of their parents.
The surprise of the book, is the love and the beauty that Ms. Forman finds in her life, even though she would never have chosen this life for herself and her children. Wonderfully written and unforgettable.

I am an avid reader, but this is one of the few books that was so overwhelming that I had to stop reading it and then come back to it. While of course I can never understand fully what the author went through, at times I was overwhelmed by all she was dealing with, and I was also very angry on her behalf (at the way she was treated numerous times by various medical professionals).

I feel this author is very honest in the book, even describing things she said, thought and did that are not 'sweet' or 'motherly'. I think that other books may sound better because the horror of what the kids (and their families) go through becomes 'worth it' -- and therefore fades a bit -- when their child eventually becomes able to walk, talk, and do the other things they expect their child to be able to do. But when those things do not happen, the idea that your child went through all sorts of painful/uncomfortable procedures without any success makes you even angrier, and to my mind, rightly so. While sometimes she comes across negatively, I was impressed with her energy and her devotion to her very sick kids.

I agree that medical professionals should read this book: it shows what being on the patient's/parent's end of this situation is like, and how even minor changes in how medical professionals treat people in this situation could help so much. Reading this book, I often wondered how the author would have been treated if she or her husband were doctors.

The author did encounter very helpful professionals, and she also learned to cut bait on the professionals who weren't helpful.

One thing that struck me was that the staff of the NICU 'forgot' to take a photo of her son when he was discharged to display on the wall, as they did with other NICU babies who left. It was as if, because he didn't have the rosy outcome they predicted he might have, they were trying to pretend he didn't exist. (His mom was much more forgiving of this than I am, characterizing it as an oversight due to how busy they were!)

To me, the most horrible part of this book, and the most frightening for anyone about to go to the hospital to have a baby, is that her rights and requests as a mother were blatantly disregarded. She requested that her very premature and very sick babies not be resuscitated when they were born, and the doctors overrode her. Whether you believe what she wanted was right or wrong, the fact that she had no say is very disturbing to me. If I were going to have a baby today, I would seriously consider having it at home to avoid what happened to her, and her family, because of the doctors' playing God.

The book tells a story that certain medical gatekeepers would rather not be emphasized. Fortunately, although the odds are against the publication of memoirs like this, Forman was able to get her work published in a respected venue, and the truth is revealed. It's not a conspiracy, the keeping of these truths from the public. It's just that some experiences are too hard for most audiences and publishers to read or sell, which makes them non-commercial. Forman had to go through this particular part of her life journey despite her initial instincts during delivery, and she handled it with powerful dedication and personal honesty. I'm just glad her husband and she are still together, as this kind of parenting is often too hard for a marriage to survive. They deserve the peace and pride they earned for themselves and their three children.

I picked up this book because I wanted a better understanding of the challenges and life changes that are encountered by a mother who doesn't have the ideal pregnancy & childbirth experience that everyone hopes for. I was reading it from the perspective of (1) a young woman who has no children, but probably will someday, and (2) a student who will one day be working in healthcare.

I thank the author for putting pen to paper on this most difficult subject; it truly opened my eyes to some situations that had never even occurred to me, and it was written thoughtfully and openly. Some of her confessions (for example, her lackadaisical attitude toward hand-washing in the NICU) were surprising and even disappointing to me; but I'm glad that she told her whole story rather than whitewashing some of the questionable bits. It was very real.