It is an intimate examination of loss and reconciliation, and above all else, the importance of perseverance and hope in the face of adversity. She explores the struggle of a body yearning to match its inner landscape, the pain of postpartum depression, the story of a marriage, being a playwright and working mom to three small children, and the desire for a resilient spiritual life in the face of illness.īrimming with insight, humility, and levity, Smile is a triumph by one of America’s leading playwrights.
Aristotle politics book 1 series#
In a series of piercing, witty, and lucid meditations, Ruhl chronicles her journey as a patient, wife, mother, and artist. So Ruhl begins an intense decade-long search for a cure while simultaneously grappling with the reality of her new face-one that, while recognizably her own-is incapable of accurately communicating feelings or intentions. And for a woman, wife, mother, and artist working in theater, the paralysis and the disconnect between the interior and exterior brings significant and specific challenges.
Aristotle politics book 1 full#
She is assured that 90 percent of Bell’s palsy patients see spontaneous improvement and experience a full recovery. With a play opening on Broadway, and every reason to smile, Sarah Ruhl has just survived a high-risk pregnancy when she discovers the left side of her face is completely paralyzed. The extraordinary story of one woman’s ten-year medical and metaphysical odyssey that brought her physical, creative, emotional, and spiritual healing, by a MacArthur genius and two-time Pulitzer finalist. It’s a primer on compassion and thoughtfulness guaranteed to have you looking at the faces around you-masked or otherwise-in a whole new light. Most surprising of all is the lighthearted and hopeful tone the memoir carries throughout, and lessons about radical self-acceptance in a world which demands anything but. Rather, Sarah-with her MacArthur genius-level flair for words and playwright’s eye for poetry-seamlessly melds her personal experience with meditations on philosophy, healing, and history, and her own identity as an artist, woman, and mother. On the surface, the book chronicles the ten years following Sarah’s sudden and inexplicable facial paralysis from Bell’s Palsy after giving birth to twins, but it’s so much more than the story of her condition. Nevertheless, upon finishing SMILE, I realized that the book in my hands might be some of the best writing I’d ever read. Also I work in a profession in which I’m surrounded by brilliant novels and, even better, colleagues and peers who can recommend the very best, so my TBR has pretty high standards. Now joined by a rag-tag group of bar patrons and pals alike, Leda and Grady set out to catch a killer-and learn how the two cases that haunt them have more in common than they ever suspected.Įlizabeth’s Pick: There’s no reason I should have felt surprised when reading SMILE by Sarah Ruhl-I knew of her Pulitzer-finalist pedigree, and the memoir came highly recommended by none other than Gloria Steinem. Leda’s psychic abilities couldn’t help the case several years before, but she’s been honing her skills and drawing a crowd at her favorite bar’s open-mic nights, where she performs Klairvoyant Karaoke-singing whatever song comes to mind when she holds people’s personal effects. When Leda, sole proprietor of Foley's Flights of Fancy, impulsively re-books Seattle PD detective Grady Merritt’s flight, her life changes in ways she couldn’t have predicted.Īfter watching his original plane blow up from the safety of the airport, Grady realizes that Leda’s special abilities could help him with a cold case he just can’t crack.ĭespite her scattershot premonitions, she agrees for a secret reason: her fiancé’s murder remains unsolved. Meet Leda Foley: devoted friend, struggling travel agent, and inconsistent psychic. A psychic travel agent and a Seattle PD detective solve a murder in this quirky mystery in the vein of Lisa Lutz’s The Spellman Files and Charlaine Harris’s Aurora Teagarden series.
0 kommentar(er)
