Still Point of the Turning World (Rapp) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Rapp has an emotional accessibility reminiscent of Wild author Cheryl Strayed; her unique experiences have a touch of the universal. She comes across as open, midthought. In her book, she wrestles with the ideas of luck and sentimentality and life and love and often circles back, unresolved. Despite being a former divinity student, she bypasses religion for literature, seeking meaning in poetry, myth and, especially, Frankenstein and its author, Mary Shelley.... Her kind of parent? The dragon mother: powerful, sometimes terrifying, full of fire and magic.
Carolyn Kellogg - Los Angeles Times


Rapp...delineates a bracing, heartbreaking countdown in the life of her terminally ill son. At age nine months, Ronan was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs.... Ronan's "death sentence" was for Rapp and her husband, Rick, living in Santa Fe, a time of grief, reckoning, and learning how to live, and her elegant, restrained work flows with reflections.... Her narrative does not follow Ronan as far as his death, but gleans lessons from Buddhism.... Unflinching and unsentimental, Rapp's work lends a useful, compassionate, healing message for suffering parents and caregivers.
Publishers Weekly


A passionate, potent chronicle of the author's last months with her son..... The author describes her moving struggle to make each day spent with her son memorable and to savor her ability to mother during the time remaining. She also considers her son's disability in light of her own congenital deformity that led to the amputation of her left leg.... Searching for spiritual solace, Rapp and her husband attended a Buddhist retreat and cherished the words of one of the teachers: "Remember there's a whole person behind whatever physical affect presents itself." A beautiful, searing exploration of the landscape of grief and a profound meditation on the meaning of life.
Kirkus Reviews