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Pick of the month: Book By Mario Jaccarini Book By Claire Bonello
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he unsolicited gift of the title is life, given to each of us by her or his parents. For the gift to be complete the baby needs to be loved and given attention by its parents. The subtitle is there because Friedman shows by means of examples and case histories how career, lifestyle, leisure, spouse, and behaviour, among other things, are chosen as a result of an adult’s experience as a baby. The effects of parenting received, good or poor, remain. When a child’s emotional needs are not met, it will risk growing up with a compulsion to make up for the lack in ways which express the type of neglect suffered. Some examples given may seem far-fetched, but they are the result of Friedman’s life-long experience in psychiatry. It has been known for quite some time that our first years of life are foundational for the rest of our lives, but this book establishes more concretely and exactly how the influence works out in later life.
Luckily, according to Friedman, we are not bound by our parents’ mistakes. We may free ourselves if we reflect on our earliest relationships with our parents. This, in some cases, may be done alone; in others, with the help of an expert and the co-operation of an understanding spouse. Friedman covers a large range of human experience. For example, he makes one understand the cruelty of fairy tales and video games, or one becomes aware that so called adult sex material is anything but that. However, his work’s chief value is in understanding the importance of good parenting for individuals as well as for society at large. Towards the end of the book Friedman writes, ‘Understanding the power of this influence will help parents to interact more thoughtfully with their children. Small changes in small families will lead to large changes in society.’
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and critical than favourable, with the general consensus being that this may very well be McEwan’s weakest novel to date. Despite this generally negative reception of Solar, it is still an engrossing read with fascinating and well-researched scientific themes and a variety of witty titbits about contemporary life. Readers will also find themselves intertwined in Beard’s mad life which includes marital problems, professional disasters, personal crises, and compulsive womanising for a man who’s pushing 70. The ending may be a tad unsatisfying, rushed, and contrived, yet McEwan never ceases to convey the struggle of human frailty, particularly that frailty which needs to deal with one of the most pressing and complex problems of our time.
olar is McEwan’s most recent work and deals with climate change in a satirical, clever and comic manner; the latter being a relatively innovative feature in McEwan’s style. The novel’s protagonist is Michael Beard, a Nobel prize-winning physicist who seems to be mirroring the predicament of the whole of humankind by being a man who ends up destroying himself due to his own greed and self-deception. It is an enjoyable read; however, the high standards previously built by McEwan in his past works are not met, suggesting that he might be more suited to darker, more serious and contemplative novels that live up to his legendary narration and compelling plots. International reception of the book has thus tended to verge on being more negative