Review: Losing Music: A Memoir by John Cotter

 Dear Literary Loves,

Oh dear.  This is most frustrating in that I just read a memoir about a chronic illness that I was diagnosed with at age sixteen and I am unable to wholeheartedly endorse it.  Actually, I have a memoir manuscript about this same chronic illness, but because I also have several additional ailments, I included all of those in my manuscript because my writing is more about living with multiple chronic illnesses.  It is not solely focused on Meniere's disease.  My manuscript is not the one I am reviewing.  And what is truly difficult is when I read a memoir about a chronic, debilitating illness that I actually also have and the memoir that I have read and am reviewing leaves me bitterly disappointed.

So for the past two weeks I have been slowly working my way through the book, Losing Music:  A Memoir by John Cotter.  The book's publisher is Milkweed Editions, an independent, nonprofit publisher.  The book is essentially about a college instructor and writer who begins losing his ability to hear the fine differences in the music that he enjoys.  He begins experiencing loss of hearing to the point that he needs to face someone in order to have an idea of what a person is saying.  Sometimes he only understands an occasional word someone is saying in a conversation. 

Next, he begins hearing roaring noises which I quickly recognize as tinnitus.  When this author finds himself on his office floor once the room starts spinning and he begins getting sick due to the quick rotation of his surroundings, I am right there too as most Meniere's disease sufferers become well-acquainted with vertigo preceded by hearing loss and continual tinnitus.  Here's one of many differences between our manuscripts:  this author develops the disease in the prime of his life which I am guessing is late 20s to mid 30s and I developed the disease at age eighteen.  

The author proceeds on a quest to have hearing tests done, research hearing aids, and visit some major hospitals in order to obtain a diagnosis and surely a cure.  Only as far as I know, there is no cure for Meniere's disease or either my specialists have been lying to me since age eighteen.  This patient wants and expects a cure.  And when he spends a week at one hospital only to realize no one can definitively give him a cure, he gets angry.  Fascinatingly, when I went to my first research hospital in North Carolina, the specialist looked at me and said there is no way I could have Meniere's disease as I do not fit the textbook case.  Man, did he get humbled when my tests at that hospital demonstrated I did most likely have Meniere's disease in my left ear! 

From the beginning of diagnosis, I did not expect a cure for Meniere's disease.    When I was informed there was no cure, I did not get upset.  I simply wanted to know by what means are we going to treat the symptoms so I am not lying for twelve hours on the floor with the room spinning and me vomiting into a trash can.  Maybe it was because I was so young at diagnosis, but the knowledge that there is no cure for Meniere's disease I accepted as fact and it made me more determined to find some form of treatment for the severity of symptoms.  

The standard treatment for Meniere's disease is diuretics, anti-anxiety meds, and vasodilators along with a seriously low sodium diet.  At least that was the treatment regimen I was offered.  This author gets much the same treatment except his includes Omega 3s and Magnesium.  Oh, and he gets really jacked hearing aids which cost a fortune.  He has to stop teaching.  He gets married and obtains good health insurance. Now he is able to afford to see top specialists in the field, but no one gives him the cure he so badly wants. 

Meniere's disease has its own schedule of intermittent hearing loss, vertigo, and tinnitus.  I never wanted hearing aids.  No way.  Not even hearing aids that sync with a cell phone or come with a key fob.  Not happening with this southern belle folks.  There are some treatments for Meniere's disease that are more drastic like gentamicin shots to the inner ear.  There is still no guarantee of a cure and you might lose even more hearing too. There is also endolymphatic shunt surgery in which a drainage canal is inserted inside the inner ear to drain the fluid (endolymph) which is believed to build up and trigger vertigo.  Neither interested me and I think this author was not confident these treatment modalities would work either. 

Or you could go quite radical and sever the nerve leading to the inner ear which most definitely will cause you to lose hearing.  Does it stop the vertigo episodes?  No idea. As far as I know it has not definitively been shown as a cure for vertigo or Meniere's disease. Neither me nor this author wanted to take that drastic leap.

So when this memoir author moves from Denver briefly back to the northeast, he is frustrated and angry.  At times he is highly irritable and agitated (I totally understand).  He contemplates losing any ability to hear whatsoever.  This contemplation along with the other volatile symptoms appear to make him feel he will be a burden to others and he considers suicide.  I contemplated total loss of hearing in one ear and took sign language courses in college just in case I needed a way to communicate in the long term should I lose the hearing in my left ear.  My right ear has never, ever had any problems with sound or Meniere's disease.  The disease pushed me to find a counselor to assist me in learning to cope with the severe symptoms of the disease.  The disease scared me witless at times, but I never contemplated throwing in the towel.  

The author then goes into how the satirist, poet, and clergyman, Jonathan Swift, most likely had Meniere's disease and it appears to have driven him mad.  Then there is the discussion of who actually put together the concept of vertigo and hearing loss being related and that would be Prosper Meniere who originally was a trauma surgeon at France's National Insitute for Deaf Mutes.  Once this author sees that people are still drawn to him despite the inconveniences of illness, he appears to come to a kind of acceptance of Meniere's disease.  Once he begins writing he seems to make the turn toward a new way of living with chronic illness.  He returns to Denver and begins teaching writing courses to refugees who also are trying to find their comfort level with a new environment, population, and way of life. They have had their lives upended too.  Once the author's focus is not entirely on Meniere's disease and how much it has cost him, he definitely appears to find a new purpose and adapt to a new way of living more assuredly with Meniere's disease.

Honestly, I could only take reading this book in short amounts of time.  I empathized with what the author was experiencing related to Meniere's disease symptoms and lack of treatment options.  I was even happy when the author went to reside at a shelter for those experiencing homelessness due to addiction simply because he sees how others have had their lives derailed and are trying to find healing and stability.  In the end we all must make a decision to live or not live with the cards we are dealt.  The ending of this book was somewhat hopeful, but I still felt overall the book was morbidly poetic regarding Meniere's disease.  I am glad the author found his way to writing; I wish I had known the success he has had with writing.  Writing has allowed me to process a lot of the ups and downs in my life.  I find writing therapeutic. 

I hope the author finds peace with Meniere's disease.  If it is of any benefit, I have had the disease for thirty-six years and I have retained seventy-five percent hearing in the left ear that has Meniere's disease and 100% hearing in the right ear which never has developed Meniere's disease.  Alas, I was informed from the beginning of Meniere's disease diagnosis that it was highly likely I would develop the disease in both ears and eventually lose all hearing.  I am really glad when it comes to Meniere's disease that I weighed all treatments carefully and did not take any specialist's word as the gospel because presently, I have proved most of them wrong.  

Honestly, I found it quite difficult to read this book.  At times I had to put it down and walk away from it because it depressed the hell out of me.  Actually, I was disappointed that a memoir on Meniere's disease was written such that it left me feeling like I have leprosy.  Chronic illness makes me unique.  I most definitely never want it to make me feel condemned.  I take a totally different approach when writing about Meniere's disease and I am sad that my version most likely might never see the light of day unless I self-publish.  I did not go to Harvard or Stanford.  I am not a poetic writer.  I write for those of us who want the truth presented in a common, heartfelt manner with a side of hilarious chaos.  

Till my next review,

Grace (Amy) 

Review: Mad Honey: A Novel by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

 Dear Lit Loves,

Whew!  Let's just start this book review regarding the book, Mad Honey:  A Novel by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan by saying if for some reason you as a reader either choose not to immerse yourself in some of the big issues of our time, you should probably not pick up a book by Picoult and Boylan.  I am familiar with both authors and am well-acquainted with the big issues addressed in this book.  I can tell you that to grow as a reader and person, you have to push yourself outside your comfort zone quite a bit and be willing to wrap your mind around controversial topics and contemplate where you stand on the big issues of our day.

So what are the big issues addressed in this book?  The process of growing up as part of the LGBTQ community, domestic violence, murder, and the depths a mother will go to in order to protect her child.  

The story centers around two mothers and their teenagers.  First, there is Olivia McAfee who fled a marriage to a volatile cardiothoracic surgeon to protect her son, Asher, from being hurt by his biological father.  Olivia returns to Adams, New Hampshire and her childhood home to make a new life for her and Asher.  She lives in her childhood home and continues the business of beekeeping started by her father.  Asher is a high school senior, suave hockey player, and helps his mom with the beekeeping business.  He has always wondered and been intrigued by what happened between his father and mother.  

Next, we have Ava Campanello and her daughter, Lilly.  Ava takes Lilly and leaves the West Coast and also her husband.  Ava is a forest ranger.  She gave birth to a son named Liam.  At a quite young age, Liam informs his parents that he identifies more as a female than male.  Liam becomes Lilly with help from her mom.  Ava's husband cannot handle or accept the reality of his son identifying as a female.  He becomes abusive toward Liam/Lily.  This is when Ava makes the decision to take Lilly and leave the West Coast.  After Liam fully transitions to become Lilly, they also move to Adams, New Hampshire where Ava takes a position as a park ranger and Lilly attends the local high school for her senior year.

Lilly Campanello and Asher McAfee start dating.  Teenage angst takes center stage now.  Suddenly, there is a murder in Adams, New Hampshire.  Everyone appears certain who the killer is and what the motive was for the murder.  But just when you think you know how a Picoult book is going to end, there is a major revelation following the verdict in the murder trial.  And once again, three of the main characters find themselves learning to live with a new reality and begin anew once again.

Throughout this book, I found myself wondering what I would do if I were either of the mothers, Olivia and Ava.  I recognized the incredibly brave ability of Lilly to live her true identity.  I put myself in Lilly's shoes and wonder if I lived through all the secrets, bullying, harassment, surgery, abuse, and volatility she experiences, would I have survived it all?  Would I have trusted anyone again aside from my mother who turned her world upside down so I could live my true identity? Could I have shared my truth with a potential friend, classmate, teacher, acquaintance, and especially a significant other?  Should I even be expected to tell those people?  

Everyone who reads this book should ask themselves these same questions.  What are we willing to risk in order to live as our true self?  If you are a parent, what would you have done had you been in Ava's position or Olivia's position as a mother?  And just how much personal information would you share if you were Lilly?  This book resonated with me as I have a family member who is part of the LGBTQ community.  

P.S.  The ending of the book was not a surprise for me.  In truth, I actually suspected this character was responsible for the murder.  The beekeeping experience was familiar to me as I spent my summers working on a farm as a teenager and my uncle was a successful beekeeper.  It takes a colony of bees to produce seriously good honey.  And someone was correct when she said, "It takes a village."  And this is especially true when it comes to raising children to become mature, intelligent, and authentic adults.

A truly outstanding book.

Till my next book review,

Grace (Amy)

Review: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

 Dear Lit Loves,

Greetings!  Taking a break from my normal routine of reading memoir as well as diverting my attention away from the recent death of my mom and attempting to administer her estate, I decided to read Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.  Many reviewers have compared this book to Dickens and David Copperfield, but I choose to look at the work as standing on its own merits.  Mrs. Kingsolver, author of nine bestsellers, poetry, and creative nonfiction constructed an outstanding novel about growing up as both an orphan and a young man who navigates his way through a disastrous foster care system while learning quite a few life lessons along the way.

Damon Fields, aka "Demon Copperfield", lives with his mom in rural Lee County, Virginia.  His mom  maintains a precarious life of addiction to drugs and alcohol.  Damon's biological father died before he was born in a region known as the Devil's Bathtub which reminded me of a pond that is surrounded by rocks and trees.  It most definitely was not a body of water anyone should swim in especially if you have no idea of the depth of the water or what inhabits the water.  Interestingly, Damon is often called by his nickname "Demon" and also by the last name of "Copperhead".  He befriends the grandson named Maggot of the neighbors who live beside he and his mom.  Maggot and Damon are friends in their elementary years and have both endured chaos in their lives mainly due to the actions of both their mothers as Maggot's mom is in prison.  Maggot's grandparents, The Peggotts,  are the most stabilizing influence in both boys' young lives. Damon even travels with the Peggots to visit Maggot's Aunt June who lives and works as a nurse in Knoxville.  

Essentially, Damon's mom marries a man who is a control-freak and who also abuses both Damon and his mother.  Damon decides to stand up against this new man himself and defies him at all costs.  Eventually, Damon finds himself with a deceased mom and now his future lies with The Department of Social Services.  Damon first goes to the home of a man who takes in foster kids with the intent of utilizing them as farm workers to help with his crops.  He meets one boy who he believes is a hero and another who becomes like a brother to him.  Eventually, he is placed with another family who introduce him to a utility room with a dog bed for a bedroom and he often goes without food.  After setting out on his own to locate his paternal grandmother, he finds himself hitchhiking, sleeping behind dumpsters, and getting robbed of what money he has.  Interestingly, he keeps going.

Eventually, through a great deal of hitchhiking and endless walking he locates his paternal grandmother who sees her son in Damon and takes him in to stay with her, but not for long.  Eventually, he goes to live with someone his paternal grandmother knows and trusts.  The next family includes the football coach of a local high school football team and his daughter, Angus, who is about the same age as Damon.  Even at this home, he learns the daughter lost her mom and her dad has a rather serious alcohol problem, but they live in a quite spacious house where Damon gets his own bedroom.  The football coach's daughter, Angus, becomes a sincere friend to Damon and Damon teaches the Winfields how to celebrate Christmas.  

Next, Demon comes across one of the boys from a previous foster home who he had admired.  After hanging out with him years later, Damon realizes this guy is truly not much of a hero at all as his former hero now sells drugs, is arrogant, and does not treat girls with any respect.  Damon does eventually make the high school football team which lends him some popularity, but he also gets injured and is treated with OxyContin which sends him on the road to addiction.  Damon does find love in the form of Dori who has had to drop out of school to care for her dying father.  She has a proclivity to sell and use some of the pain meds given to her by nurses helping to care for her dad.  Eventually, Dori loses her dad to cancer and Damon moves into the home she shared with her dad to look after her.  Alas, in time Dori succumbs to addiction as well.  

When Damon learns that Maggot's grandfather, Mr. Peggottt, is dying he goes to pay his respects and learns Maggot has gone gothic and appears to be using drugs.  Maggot's Aunt June has moved to Lee County near her parents and the girl she loves like a daughter, Emmy, has gone missing.  The reader later learns that Emmy ran off with one of the boys Damon met in foster care and Aunt June, Maggot, and Damon locate her in an abandoned house somewhere in Atlanta.  Emmy is found disheveled and strung out on drugs.  Aunt June brings all of them home and promptly sends Emmy to a rehab center outside of Lee County, Virginia.  

If there is one attribute very evident in Damon's character, it is his ability to persevere in the harshest of environments.  He witnesses his one-time hero from foster care fall to his death while another boy related to the Peggottts dies in the process of trying to save Damon's former hero from his years in foster care.  Maggot lands in jail and serves his time for delinquency and playing a part in the death of a relative and friend.  Aunt June offers Damon an opportunity to turn his life around in a rehab center out of state.  Three years at the rehab center are enough to help Damon learn to live without the use of drugs while also maintaining a job.  Upon Damon's return to Lee County, he visits all the beauty of Lee County and living in the countryside that he has missed while in the city at a rehab center.  He also returns to visit his last foster family, Coach Winfield and his daughter, Angus.  Angus has now completed college and become a counselor and social worker.  

The one skill Damon learned to refine and love in high school, drawing, becomes a means of saving himself.  Two teachers took an interest in him while he attended high school and he later worked on a cartoon for the local newspaper with a fellow foster brother named Tommy.   Much later in the story, a publisher takes interest in his cartoon stories and invites him to compile a book with the lessons from the newspaper cartoon strips he made for the local newspaper.   In the end Damon finally gets to visit one place on earth he has always longed to visit and he is reunited with Angus, the football coach's daughter, who never missed an opportunity to set him straight when he was in high school and additionally tried to help him learn not to succumb to all the tragedy he has encountered in life, but to use the lessons he gained from a tumultuous childhood to assist him in making a better life for himself.

Creatively, the author had the Southern dialect of the Virginia region where the story takes place portrayed perfectly especially in the character of Damon.   This book offers a clearly vivid perspective of what many children face daily in the foster care system.  The epidemic of the opioid crisis is vividly portrayed among the characters in the book and its effects on the population of Lee County, Virginia.  Also, I liked that the author included characters throughout the book that remained invested in the main character, Damon, even though they did not have to because in my opinion every child/person needs someone to believe in them and to teach them how to believe in themselves. Finally, this book demonstrates perseverance and reads like a guide on how to save yourself when you encounter some of the most cruel, demeaning, and humbling aspects of life.

A quite fine book that I highly recommend!

Til my next review,

Grace (Amy)

When Life As You Have Known It Suddenly Comes To A Screeching Halt

 Dear Fellow Memoir Readers,

It has been more than a minute since my last book review.  In October 2022 my mother and last living parent began having pain in her lower back, right side, and stomach.  After a visit to the local hospital Emergency Room and a CT scan with contrast fluid, mom's primary care physician called to let us know that there was a massive tumor at the bottom of my mom's esophagus.  The tumor was pushing on the organs surrounding it which in turn caused the pain my mom had been experiencing.  After quite a wait for a biopsy, our family learned my mom had stage four Esophageal Cancer specifically Adenocarcinoma.  The tumor was deemed inoperable.  Interestingly, mom never once smoked, suffered from gastric reflux, or ever had a problem swallowing until this tumor was discovered.

Though believe it or not there was an actual treatment plan for this terminal cancer, it would cause some brutal side effects and only give mom an extra two years of life.  Mom opted not to undergo any treatment as of November 28th, 2022.  She wanted to remain in her home; however, she needed round the clock supervision and care so my sibling and I opted to bring her to our homes.  We requested in home hospice care for mom.  We witnessed mom slowly lose her ability to do all those humanly tasks most of us do each day and never think twice about it.  

Mom died in the middle of January 2023 and life for me and my sibling has not quite been the same.  Since my last review I have seen my mom diagnosed with inoperable cancer, opt for no treatment, be treated by Hospice in my home and my sibling's home, and tragically die.  Since mom's death, I learned that when your last parent dies and they own property or have assets, you must administer their will.  Administering a will is a whole lot easier if you have an estate attorney assisting you.  (Heaven help those whose parents' or remaining parent never bothered to complete an official will because then the administering of the estate process gets exceedingly more difficult).

Upon hiring an estate attorney my sibling and I had to file for letters of testamentary as we are co-executors of our mom's estate.  Letters of testamentary can take six to eight weeks to be approved and allow the deceased's executors to conduct estate business.  Since receiving these valuable documents, we have had to sell mom's car and clean out her home.  This is no easy task when the home is one in which your parents resided for over fifty years.   Needless to say, cleaning out the house took several months.  The home is now up for sale and currently under contract.  To complete the estate administration process, we sign off on an inventory list of our mother's assets.  Once the court approves the inventory list, the estate attorney can distribute final assets of the estate and we can officially close mom's estate.

All of the above has occurred in the last eight months.  I hope to return to reviewing books soon and in time pick up my pen and continue writing my own manuscripts.  I have always said who needs fiction when real life can be such a colossal story in itself.  

Best,

Grace (Amy)