Being with Rachel: A Personal Story of Memory and Survival

Rating:
Summary: smartest memoir of the year
Review: Atop all the courageous acts in this story, the final and most lasting one is Karen Brennan's commitment of her story to print. In her turmoil's depths, she attests to uncomfortable truths and confesses her impassioned dismay that love is sometimes mixed with guilt, that hope is a hairsbreadth from dread, that the cruelest and most unjust penalty is in another light a largesse with unending rewards. Most impressive is the revelatory presentation of an active mind (or perhaps two minds) learning, reformulating, performing. In her new role as caregiver researching her daughter's brain injury, Brennan confronts anew terms she had understood as fiction instructor and critical theorist: reading this, you'll come to know that what you appreciate in your favorite author or in your best friend's letters is your own innate complicity in a good act of perserveration or confabulation or dissociation. The gradual reunderstanding of memory and narrative is a thrill to experience.

Notwithstanding her publisher's marketing strategy, this is far more than a story of survival; and though she may share with Mark Doty or John Bayley a life marked by caregiving and loss, Brennan authors a far finer literary memoir, imaginatively and unsympathetically crafted, with a style more akin to the radical sincerity of J.R. Ackerley or Annie Ernaux or Herve Guibert.

These are your best friend's letters. Karen Brennan is your favorite author.

Rating:
Summary: A moving story of rebirth and courage
Review: Karen Brennan's Being With Rachel ... tells of a family's changes when a 25-year-old daughter is gravely injured in a motorcycle accident. Her mother's account of her daughter's slow recovery, determination to walk again, and lasting brain injuries makes for a moving story of rebirth and courage.

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Can-Do Book to Inspire and Encourage Caregivers
Review: This book has touched me deeply and inspired me to keep trying, even when times are so very challenging. Like the Guadalupe, quite miraculously, this one book was brought to me by my toddler son as he reached to pull "Being With Rachel" from a shelf of well over a thousand different books!

My son (the one who handed me this book) was born with brain injuries we are not even certain about at this time due to his teenage birthmom's irresponsibility. We have been through all of the physiatrists, child psychologists, physical, speech, and occupational therapists and social workers over the past two years in assisting him to walk and talk and use his hands.

There have been many times that I have felt just like Karen Brennan has expressed so beautifully in this book. Her emotions and frustrations that people in these situations often can't even identify, much less tell someone about, are described in ways that allowed me to find words for my own feelings and to accept more of those moments when the answers are not forthcoming.

Like Karen, we also lost a parent this year and oddly found new hope and help and inspiration out of the despair. Karen and Rachel Brennan have made me feel that someone else was not only coping but triumphing with tiny steps, and making their way to the light.

The beauty of this story is that the writing is excellent and the writer's ability to open her heart and share her deepest thoughts has not only helped her daughter and herself heal but countless others who may be facing similar challenges in their own lives.

Give this book to someone who needs encouragement, knowing that they will find empathy, sincerity, and a friend with real experience and undying love.