Daughter of the Queen of Sheba: A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: Another Beautiful Mind
Review: I am saddened to find so many unfavorable reviews of this memoir. Reading it, I was reminded of "Angela's Ashes," "A Beautiful Mind" and "Growing Up." I found Lyden's prose both poetic and evocative. I thought she portrayed her own family and herself with remarkable journalistic perspective, but also with compassion. I am amazed at the extent of Lyden's success in her attempt to describe her mother's mania, as well as the author's candor about her own life. There's no self-indulgence in these pages, only a long and difficult distance bravely traveled and recounted for us, so we can see the terrain through her eyes. To the critical reviewers, I say, "Let us read your life," and to Ms. Lyden an unequivocal, "Bravo."

Rating:
Summary: Another Beautiful Mind
Review: I am saddened to find so many unfavorable reviews of this memoir. Reading it, I was reminded of "Angela's Ashes," "A Beautiful Mind" and "Growing Up." I found Lyden's prose both poetic and evocative. I thought she portrayed her own family and herself with remarkable journalistic perspective, but also with compassion. I am amazed at the extent of Lyden's success in her attempt to describe her mother's mania, as well as the author's candor about her own life. There's no self-indulgence in these pages, only a long and difficult distance bravely traveled and recounted for us, so we can see the terrain through her eyes. To the critical reviewers, I say, "Let us read your life," and to Ms. Lyden an unequivocal, "Bravo."

Rating:
Summary: disappointing
Review: I bought this book after watching Ms. Lyden's appearance on Larry King Live, in which she spoke engagingly and eloquently about her childhood, her mother's illness, and the effects it had on the family. Sadly, she speaks more effectively than she writes.

Big words taste and feel good in our mouths, and it's fun to string a bunch together (this I know from personal experience), but after reading that style through a couple of chapters it got tiresome. Ms. Lyden seemed more interested in demonstrating her command of the English language than in telling her story.

I was also disappointed by too-frequent and too-lengthy sidetracks into other aspects of the family's life (for instance, the whole trip to Mexico story could have been told in a couple of pages). I had the impression Ms. Lyden was trying to flesh out the book.

For those interested in the subject matter, this is worth a try if you can find it second-hand or in the library, but not worth full price.

I do recommend watching Ms. Lyden if you ever get a chance to see her being interviewed - she is an excellent communicator...just not on paper.

Rating:
Summary: dissapointing
Review: I found Jacki Lyden's book about her life with her bi-polar mother very dissapointing. I must give credit where credit is due, Ms. Lyden has a wonderful writing style and appears to have led a fascinating life, but I finished the book with a strong sense of dissapointment. Ms. Lyden's story did not answer the questions I had about her feelings about the real possibility that she could fall prey to the genetic disease that her mother suffered from. Nor did she leave the reader with any sense of sympathy for her. I felt that she portrayed herself as a martyred character who had an inflated sense of self. The callous description of Ms. Lyden's abortion and her endless trivial details about her "rodeo job" caused me to dislike the book even more. I had high expectations for this book, but I was left feeling unfulfilled.

Rating:
Summary: would not recommend
Review: I trudged through 40 pages and basically determined that this whole family must be nuts and we read this for book group and everyone agreed this was not an easy book or an enjoyable one

Rating:
Summary: Sad and Predictable
Review: Prior to reading this book, I read reviews which proclaimed this book as being "A Masterpiece." I will say that the topic of the book is SAD and Depressing and my heart goes out to anyone that has experienced what the author has written. I felt so depressed chapter after chapter. The book seemed to be getting worse the deeper I read and I was unable to complete the last 3 chapters without a good, strong, stiff drink.....And I don't even drink.

Rating:
Summary: Touching
Review: This is the story of a long self-discovery journey. Ms. Lyden writes a mostly wonderful memoir of her life. Although the main focus is apparently her mother, the book has a few sub-themes and characters to make it flow in a wonderful way. It was written so well, that I took two months to read it in order to make it last as long as possible. I loved all the details of her early childhood, and particularly got fond of Jackie's grandmother. I've seen reviews saying that Ms. Lyden writting was self absorbed and that she was playing a martyr. I dissagre, I think she was honest, even to the point of confessing how a part of her wanted her mother locked up in county's mental institution. One of my fears on reading this book was to find it too depressing, and true, it had some sad moments, but I also found myself laughing pretty hard. The whole Christmas episode where her mother pretends to be dead, was hilarious. One of those family situations that infuriates you when it happens and years laters you talk about it, and find the humor in it. I can see why Ms. Lyden wrote about her Middle-East experience as a relation to Sheba's Queendom, but the whole situation on her "Rodeo" job was a little distracting. It was an interesting part of her life that should be in another of her future books. Everything else in the book is top notch and I recomend reading it.

Rating:
Summary: What a Queendom!
Review: This is the story of a long self-discovery journey. Ms. Lyden writes a mostly wonderful memoir of her life. Although the main focus is apparently her mother, the book has a few sub-themes and characters to make it flow in a wonderful way. It was written so well, that I took two months to read it in order to make it last as long as possible. I loved all the details of her early childhood, and particularly got fond of Jackie's grandmother. I've seen reviews saying that Ms. Lyden writting was self absorbed and that she was playing a martyr. I dissagre, I think she was honest, even to the point of confessing how a part of her wanted her mother locked up in county's mental institution. One of my fears on reading this book was to find it too depressing, and true, it had some sad moments, but I also found myself laughing pretty hard. The whole Christmas episode where her mother pretends to be dead, was hilarious. One of those family situations that infuriates you when it happens and years laters you talk about it, and find the humor in it. I can see why Ms. Lyden wrote about her Middle-East experience as a relation to Sheba's Queendom, but the whole situation on her "Rodeo" job was a little distracting. It was an interesting part of her life that should be in another of her future books. Everything else in the book is top notch and I recomend reading it.

Rating:
Summary: Good start but looses itself midway through
Review: To travel this memoir with the author, the reader gains some small comprehension of life with a bi-polar personality and how the illness dominates a family, shrinking everyone else into insignificance. Bi-polar disorder or manic depression is a phenomenon recently addressed by a number of women in their memoirs, or any of a myriad of dysfunctional behaviors that tear at the fabric of family structure.

In the severest cases a role reversal takes place early in the daughter's life, predictably long before the child has even defined herself. Literally, the child is forced by circumstance to relinquish her childhood; by its very nature, this confusion enables the mother to continue the destructive behavior at the expense of the entire family unit. The price is enormous, as each sibling spends years as an adult trying to recover the child within, forced to be nurturer rather than nurtured. This usurpation of childhood is probably more common than it would appear to an observer because family members cover for eachother, creating a united front.

While Lyden paints a vivid picture of the desolation of mental illness, by far the more heartbreaking reality is the years of confusion ahead for the daughter, whose own behavior may have become more risky and outrageous in an effort to compensate. The mother's legacy is a few moments of pure joy in a lifetime of painful distortion.

I found the book truthful and brutally honest, until the last chapter. By then I knew everything I ever wanted to know about Lyden's mother. The final chapter, "The Queen of Sheba", seemed to wrap the package in a bow, as if to say, "See how clever she is, even in her delusions?" At that point I was exhausted by Lyden's mother and her terminal uniqueness. The debris left in the wake of her chaos leaves nothing to the imagination. The memoir spoke entirely to me of a woman's struggle to survive her childhood, warts and all, to purchase a sense of self from the remains.