Book Review- Jennifer Pastiloff's On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard

Thank you to Penguin Group Dutton for providing me with a copy of Jennifer Pastiloff’s memoir, On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard, in exchange for an honest review.

Jennifer Pastiloff has built an incredible life. She is in a loving marriage, has a beautiful child, and has created a successful career as an inspirational leader of life changing yoga retreats. However, the road to Pastiloff’s currently life was bumpy.

Pastiloff had a tumultuous childhood, which included the death of her father. She suffered from crippling self-doubt and anorexia. Her self-image issues played a role in her refusal to seek medical attention for her progressive hearing loss, an issue that caused her many years of social pain, excluding her from fully participating in conversations and feeling like people viewed her as less intelligent. She meandered through her twenties/early thirties, engaging in self-destructive activities and unable to figure out her true career path or to find a good romantic partner.

On Being Human is part memoir and part self-help book, as Pastiloff gives tips and exercises gleaned from her popular workshops for reader to try at home. Pastiloff is relatable and raw. I related to her sense of feeling lost in her twenties/early thirties. She dropped out of college and spent over a decade working as a server at a cafe. I was in a similar situation and I could relate to knowing that you have skills and dreams, but also not quite knowing how to focus on a career path. The sense of knowing that there is so much more out there for you, but also not knowing how to grab it. In a culture where we value the traditional education/career path, it can be very difficult for people who do not stick to that mold. Pastiloff filled me with encouragement and hope. I would definitely recommend On Being Human, to anyone who is feeling a little lost.

Another aspect of Pastiloff’s memoir is the idea of following your gut or inner voice. Pastiloff did not have dreams of being a yoga instructor or a motivational coach, but she listened to her intuition when the opportunities presented themselves, she took them. The first time she met her would-be husband, she wasn’t interested in him, but a decade later, her gut told her to pursue the relationship. It’s part trusting yourself and part timing, as life is ever evolving and sometimes you might need the time to grow, in order to be ready to accept an opportunity. Pastiloff in her early twenties was not ready to accept certain things and she needed the time to grow. Rather than beating herself up over these missed years, she looks at them as a time needed to develop into the person she is today.

Pastiloff experienced massive hearing loss, a condition that slowly worsened over many years. Finally, she realized that she needed to use a hearing aid, something that she had been embarrassed about to the point of choosing to miss out on hearing. It was a vanity issue. When she finally conceded to needing the hearing aids, she realized that she could not afford them. However, Pastiloff had built a community of friends and clients who wanted to help her purchase them. This community came through with several other financial emergencies. My take-away is if you show enough love to other people, especially giving it freely with no expectations, often this love will come back to you in abundance. I’ve seen this happen in my own life and in the lives of those around me. Pastiloff’s younger adult years were spent in such fear of judgement, that when she was able to push that aside, she saw the blessing of allowing other people to be part of her life. We often hear that it “takes a village” to raise a child, but I think that it applies to everyone. We all need help sometimes. We need a sense of belonging to a community.

On Being Human is a wonderful reminder of the power of humanity and of embracing life. I highly recommend it for anyone who needs a bit of a boost. I’d love to attend one of Pastiloff’s workshops and to see how her energy in person, compares to the page. It is radiant in her memoir!

Book Review - Young-Ha Kim's Diary of a Murderer and Other Stories

On a recent visit to Powell’s Books in Portland, I was perusing the crime/mystery section and Korean author, Young-Ha Kim’s short story collection, Diary of a Murderer and Other Stories, caught my eye. I like to go opposite with my reading seasons, disturbing in the summer, and light-hearted in the winter. You can’t feel too dark when you’re sunbathing with a Mai Tai in one hand and crime novel in the other!

The collection begins with the title story, Diary of a Murderer. This is the longest story in the collection and it was my favorite for its strong narrative voice and intriguing premise. It follows a former serial killer, who has gotten away with his crimes, but now has Alzheimers. He is cognizant enough of his disease to worry that he might accidentally reveal himself, yet far gone enough to be living in a fantasy world, where he believes that his daughter’s new boyfriend is a fellow serial killer. His daughter is also a secret that he keeps, as he adopted the girl when she was a child, kidnapping her after killing her mother. His unreliable memory forces him to walk on egg shells. This serial killer who has caused so many people fear, now fears himself. It’s a great story idea and Kim does a fantastic job at keeping the tension. I felt both disgust and empathy towards the main character. He is a great anti-hero.

The second story in the collection is called, The Origin of Life. This story details a love triangle, where a woman in an abusive relationship manipulates her childhood friend to help her. I felt this was the weakest story in the collection, although Kim’s writing is so skilled, that it still kept my interest.

Missing Child explores the idea of a kidnapped child being returned to his parents after many years. The son is now a preteen and he is not the boy that his parents imagined that he would become. Would he have been like this all along? Or did the nurture part of the upbringing that he had with his kidnapper, over take the nature, the biology from his parents? What happens when your missing child is returned and it is not the happy occasion that you imagined? This story was fascinating and intensely emotional. The lives of the characters are utterly destroyed from one incident. The theme of child abduction is also carried over from Diary of a Murder, making these two stories solid companion pieces.

The last story is The Writer, about a novelist with mental health issues. The novelist is an unreliable narrator who is spiraling out of control, imagining a torrid relationship with the ex-wife of his would-be publisher. This is also a great companion to the title story, as both deal with unreliable narrators and mental health.

Kim is a new-to-me writer discovery. I enjoyed the intensity of his stories and surprising story arcs. He crafts vivid, emotionally wrought characters that I will not soon forget. I highly recommend Diary of a Murderer and Other Stories.

Movie Review- The Tomorrow Man

A divorced doomsday prepper named Ed (John Lithgow), falls in love with a beautiful widow named Ronnie (Blythe Danner). Ed meets Ronnie at a local grocery store and is impressed by her shopping skills, mistaking her for a fellow prepper. However, not only is Ronnie not a prepper, but in complete contrast to Ed’s meticulously ordered life, Ronnie is a secret hoarder, hiding an out-of-control habit that she developed in response to the pain of losing both her husband and daughter.

The Tomorrow Man has two compelling lead characters in Ed and Ronnie. They are both seniors in pain, using material objects as a way to secure their own versions of safety. In the United States, many of us have more material possessions than we need and this story deals with different types of mental disorders that can outwardly manifest through our relationship with our objects. The themes of The Tomorrow Man are well-timed with the currently tidiness crazy sparked by Japanese organization guru, Marie Kondo.

Ed and Ronnie each feel an extreme lack of control. Ed takes control via an orderly stockpile of necessities, such as toilet paper and canned goods.. He creates lists and makes what he considers smart shopping choices. He does not want to be caught unaware if the world comes to an end, which he thinks is imminent. He spends lots of time interacting with other preppers on doomsday message boards and making efforts to convert his adult son, which creates a strained relationship. While Ed may believe that there is a need to be prepared for doomsday, it is clear that he is also reacting to a nasty divorce and the break-up of his family. He is not close to his son. The prepping is Ed’s way of feeling like he has control over his life.

Ronnie’s control comes from the comfort of buying and surrounding herself with objects. When her daughter and husband died, she simply kept their things and kept adding to her collections, until the problem grew out of control. Ed loves to share that he is a prepper, where as Ronnie is ashamed to be a hoarder. She dates Ed for a long time, before sharing this aspect of her life with him. It is too painful.

The Tomorrow Man is an interesting story idea.. I’m fascinated by the way we relate to our possessions and I am drawn towards stories that involve grief. The lead actors are fabulous. However, The Tomorrow Man is not a great film. It was snail pace slow. Ed and Ronnie are socially awkward characters and rather than it be endearing, it was uncomfortable.

Ed develops a crush on Ronnie, while seeing her at a grocery store and to get her attention, he stalks her in a creepy way. She is clearly uncomfortable with his behavior, yet, she inexplicably agrees to his offer of a date. I really thought that we were going to discover that Ed or even both Ed and Ronnie, are autistic, which would explain the lack towards understanding social cues, but this was not revealed in the story. For example, in Graeme Simsion’s novel, The Rosie Project, the main character is autistic and in love, making many blunders, yet he is likeable and charming. Ed remained uncomfortable throughout The Tomorrow Man.

The ending was quirky. I did not anticipate it. The scene that precedes the final minute, is quite lovely, with Ed and Ronnie both making big strides towards overcoming their issues with control.

I would not recommend The Tomorrow Man. The story is clunky and slow. However, it does present thought-provoking content, specifically, it will make you consider you own relationship with your stuff. It made me feel like having a good spring clean!