New Life, No Instructions

January 13, 2014
Caldwell, a Cambridge, Mass.,–based author of two stalwart memoirs, most recently about the untimely death of her best friend Caroline Knapp (Let’s Take the Long Way Home), again confronts, with pluck and fortitude, the hurdles that life throws her way—in this case, hip surgery while tending to a new pet Samoyed. Caldwell, we know from her previous work, adores dogs, specifically big dogs, and after the death of her beloved Clementine, in 2008, she tracked down a Samoyed breeder she had her eye on for years and procured a new puppy, Tula. However, at age 57 and with a “bum leg,” the product of being stricken with polio as a six-month-old child growing up in West Texas in 1951, Caldwell wondered at the wisdom of getting a very muscular, high-octane dog when her leg strength seemed to be diminishing alarmingly. Indeed, after her limp got worse, after falling and increasing pain she could no longer ignore, she finally got an X-ray, and the severe degenerative arthritis that had been gnawing away at her right hip was clearly revealed. Hip surgery in 2011 proved a regular miracle for a condition like hers, despite the arduous six-month rehabilitative process. Yet poor Tula gets back-seated in this crisp, straightforward work, and while the author finds her solid footing, her narrative lacks the emotional centering of her last work.

April 1, 2014
Making the most of a new lease on life. Caldwell (Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship, 2010, etc.) has had a writing career intertwined with the writer Caroline Knapp (Drinking: A Love Story, 1997, etc.), as the two friends supported each other through challenges big and small. They've played roles in each other's memoirs; this time, Knapp's role is posthumous (she died in 2002) but no less important. Caldwell takes the death of her friend, lost to cancer, as one of three leaping-off points. She also deals with the deaths of both her mother and her dog, and while these three losses happen in a 10-year span, they comprise a loss of nearly all the closest companions she has known. "One of the things you miss after someone dies is the shared fact of you. The we of me," she writes: "The existential anchor," and as we know, without an anchor, there is drift. The author's drift is our gain, though, as she ably explores the shifts of our hearts as we grieve. Her body underwent shifts as well; a case of polio from early childhood reared up again, leaving her barely ambulatory. While the heart's ailments took longer to heal, at least in Caldwell's case, science could assist the body. A common surgery, it turned out, could return her to full mobility; when it did, she experienced a renewed vigor in easing the emotional pain. She adopted a dog, wondering if she had waited long enough after her last dog passed away. As she explores the elastic boundaries of the heart in giving and taking new beings into our lives, she discusses her reconnection with the community around her. Readers will enjoy Caldwell's thoughtful, wide-eyed view of the world around her and her musings on how we get our bearings in midlife.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 15, 2013
Once the Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic for the "Boston Globe", Caldwell has since made her mark with beautifully wrought memoirs (e.g., "Let's Take the Long Way Home"). Here she relates how, after losing her best friend, her mother, and her dog, she also developed a painful limp as a result of having had polio in infancy. Then simple surgery restored her walk--and her sense of self.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2014
Getting old, as they say, is not for sissies, and no one would call Pulitzer Prize winner Caldwell (Let's Take the Long Way Home, 2010) a wimp. Yet time and loss were taking their toll as she suffered the deaths of her mother and her two best friends, one human (the writer Caroline Knapp) and one canine (her beloved Samoyed, Clementine). As Caldwell moved forward, she adopted a new puppy and immediately began to doubt the wisdom of this decision. The polio that had plagued her since childhood and left her with a perceptible limp was becoming increasingly painful, making life with an endlessly energetic and preternaturally strong dog difficult. When it was finally determined that Caldwell required a total hip replacement, the diagnosis was both a relief and a challenge for a middle-aged, single woman. There may not have been a road map for the life-changing trip Caldwell was about to take, but, as this memoir makes clear, given her indefatigable sense of commitment and community, at the very least Caldwell realized she had the power to endure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)