Book Club! In Short Reviews.
Book Club! In Short Reviews is Hummingbird’s new book review series. We say “Book Club” because we really want to get a conversation going if you are so inclined! Please feel free to comment in the “Comments” section below the byline or by clicking here and sending it to us. We will repost the review with your comments. We are trying this shortened format because we know everyone is so busy—with their “usual” life and then pandemic life piled on top! We are only posting recommended reads and are rating them recommend, strongly recommend, or MUST READ! Let us know what you think. All reviews are by Hummingbird contributors.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
by Lori Gottlieb
Rating: Strongly Recommend
I belong to several book clubs, and I have to admit there are few books that I enjoyed as much as this one. For the first time, every member of the book club enjoyed it as well. So much so that half of us bought the hardcover, so that we could earmark pages that were helpful.
Why? Well, first the synopsis.
This is the story of a clinical psychologist who realized that she also needed therapy. She takes us on the journey of her own life and satisfies our voyeuristic impulse to be a “fly on the wall” during therapy sessions. She takes us through the therapeutic sessions of a few patients (she calls clients), all different ages, different needs and different phases in their lives. One client is terminally ill. A young patient does not appear to benefit from therapy. An extremely narcissistic patient ultimately unveils a source of his narcissism. The author’s own need for therapy and her candid assessment of her therapy sessions allow us to see how difficult it is for a doctor to heal herself. The reader gets to follow their stories as she learned them, incomplete pictures that get fuller as the book reveals.
But what makes this worth a “hardcover” was that in a very readable manner, she has spread some basic theories of therapy and nuggets that we can use in our daily lives. For example, a friend of mine responded well to the author’s comment that a “complaint is a venting and not a call to action” (for those of us who like to “fix things”). For me, a tidbit “follow the envy allows a therapist to uncover a deep need” allowed me to understand some relationships that I have.
It is a long book (over 400 pages); but I never lost interest. You may want to save your money and buy the hardcover. Strongly recommended!
Review by Angela Rieck.
