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Title details for The Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp - Available

The Still Point of the Turning World

by Emily Rapp
Ali Ahn
Audiobook
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Like all mothers, Emily Rapp had ambitious plans for her first and only child, Ronan. He would be smart, loyal, physically fearless, and level-headed, but fun. He would be good at crossword puzzles like his father. He would be an avid skier like his mother. Rapp would speak to him in foreign languages and give him the best education. But all of these plans changed when Ronan was diagnosed at nine months old with Tay-Sachs disease, a rare and always-fatal degenerative disorder. Ronan was not expected to live beyond the age of three; he would be permanently stalled at a developmental level of six months. Rapp and her husband were forced to re-evaluate everything they thought they knew about parenting. They would have to learn to live with their child in the moment; to find happiness in the midst of sorrow; to parent without a future. The Still Point of the Turning World is the story of a mother' s journey through grief and beyond it. Rapp' s response to her son' s diagnosis was a belief that she needed to " make my world big"— to make sense of her family' s situation through art, literature, philosophy, theology and myth. Drawing on a broad range of thinkers and writers, from C.S. Lewis to Sylvia Plath, Hegel to Mary Shelley' s Frankenstein, Rapp learns what wisdom there is to be gained from parenting a terminally ill child. In luminous, exquisitely moving prose she re-examines our most fundamental assumptions about what it means to be a good parent, to be a success, and to live a meaningful life.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 7, 2013

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781470361358
      • File size: 227141 KB
      • Duration: 07:53:12

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from November 5, 2012
      Rapp's next work after her memoir about her childhood disability and foot amputation (Poster Child) delineates a bracing, heartbreaking countdown in the life of her terminally ill son. At age nine months, Ronan was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs, a rare, degenerative disease, involving the lack of an enzyme, that is always fatal, striking the parents as a complete surprise, despite the author's having been tested during standard prenatal screening. An affliction most prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews, Tay-Sachs actually has more than a hundred mutations. 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 and excerpts from writers and poets like Mary Shelley, Pablo Neruda, and Sylvia Plath, as well as supporters who helped her during the difficult unraveling of her son's condition. Writing about Ronan allowed her to claim the sorrow and truly look at her son the way he was. Her narrative does not follow Ronan as far as his death, but gleans lessons from Buddhism and elsewhere in order that Rapp could "walk through this fire without being consumed by it." Unflinching and unsentimental, Rapp's work lends a useful, compassionate, healing message for suffering parents and caregivers. Agent, Dorian Karchmar, William Morris Endeavor

    • Library Journal

      July 1, 2013

      Rapp's (Poster Child) world falls apart when she learns that her nine-month-old son, Ronan, is suffering from Tay-Sachs disease, an untreatable genetic disorder. Instead of chronicling Ronan's day-to-day decline, Rapp here looks to such writers as Mary Shelley and C.S. Lewis for inspiration in making sense of her son's inevitable decline and death, which will likely occur before he turns three. For those facing the death of a loved one, Rapp's elegant, unsentimental meditation on grief demonstrates how a mother can survive even the worst of tragedies. Reader Ali Ahn conveys just the right tone of loving concern sprinkled with rage against life's unfairness. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in a personal, yet philosophical, discussion of death. [The Penguin hc was a New York Times best seller.--Ed.]--Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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