Review of The Ultimate Love
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Review of The Ultimate Love
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Ultimate Love" by Sherine Anniruth.]
The Ultimate Truth by Sherine Anniruth was written to share a mother’s grief over the loss of her child as well as act as a guide to others who are also walking a similar path of grief. It chronicles, in a raw and personal manner, the writer’s profound grief and yearning for her eldest son who lost his fight to cancer at the young age of twenty five. Throughout the book, Anniruth delves directly into her own struggles along grief’s journey and the effort made to come out of the roller coaster of emotions that almost paralyses her. What she shares as a guide for readers walking a similar path as hers are the little coping strategies and nuggets of insights that she gleaned after four years of trying to come to terms with the loss of her son who can never be returned to her.
One of the strengths of the book lies in the intimacy with which the writer shares her experiences of grief and pain – the reader can easily feel her emotions and be drawn into them whether it is rage, yearning, hopelessness, hope, love, reconciliation...and the list goes on . At times it feels like we are reading Anniruth’s personal diary which may indeed be the case because she mentions in her book that pouring out her feelings through writing became a healing therapy for her.
The other strength of the book is that throughout its pages are interspersed sentences or phrases which by themselves are nuggets of wisdom that we can carry away and bring forth to mind when the need arises. For example, in Chapter 17, there is this sentence that I particularly like, that is, “The only cure for grief is to grieve”. In one short sentence, we are reminded that if we are ever to be relieved of our suffering, we must first be WILLING to endure the suffering itself. It is only in the endurance that positives such as strength, determination and forbearance rise up to bring us out of the dark abyss.
On the other hand, the book’s strength can also be its weakness. By this, what I mean is that while the focus of the book is about grief for the loss of a child and how to deal with it, I found that most of the chapters lacked focus. Although every chapter has a title to it, I found it difficult to pinpoint the specifics of the content of each chapter to its title. Reading each chapter is like reading someone’s meandering thoughts in her diary on her sufferings with her grief, and at some points, it gets repetitive, as in expressing the same things all over again but using different words. This can cause readers to lose focus and continued interest in reading the book.
I rate this book by Anniruth 3 out of 4 because despite the seeming lack of focus in the chapters, it is still a good book to pick up. If the reader is not too picky about structure but is happy to open to pages at random, there is bound to be some sentence or phrase there that will stick out to remind us that in the midst of our feelings of grief and sadness, life is still beautiful as long as we make the effort to look for it.
Readers who feel immense pain and loss over the death of a loved one, especially one’s own child, should be able to find solace in reading this book and identify with the grief expressed through Anniruth’s writing. Even if like me, you have not experienced the pain and grief as such a loss can bring, you can still find inspiration and motivation through the many nuggets of stand alone wisdom that are interspersed throughout the book . Who knows, should we find ourselves wallowing in self pity one gloomy and rainy day, won’t we be glad to have The Ultimate Truth lying just within our reach1!
******
The Ultimate Love
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
The Ultimate Truth by Sherine Anniruth was written to share a mother’s grief over the loss of her child as well as act as a guide to others who are also walking a similar path of grief. It chronicles, in a raw and personal manner, the writer’s profound grief and yearning for her eldest son who lost his fight to cancer at the young age of twenty five. Throughout the book, Anniruth delves directly into her own struggles along grief’s journey and the effort made to come out of the roller coaster of emotions that almost paralyses her. What she shares as a guide for readers walking a similar path as hers are the little coping strategies and nuggets of insights that she gleaned after four years of trying to come to terms with the loss of her son who can never be returned to her.
One of the strengths of the book lies in the intimacy with which the writer shares her experiences of grief and pain – the reader can easily feel her emotions and be drawn into them whether it is rage, yearning, hopelessness, hope, love, reconciliation...and the list goes on . At times it feels like we are reading Anniruth’s personal diary which may indeed be the case because she mentions in her book that pouring out her feelings through writing became a healing therapy for her.
The other strength of the book is that throughout its pages are interspersed sentences or phrases which by themselves are nuggets of wisdom that we can carry away and bring forth to mind when the need arises. For example, in Chapter 17, there is this sentence that I particularly like, that is, “The only cure for grief is to grieve”. In one short sentence, we are reminded that if we are ever to be relieved of our suffering, we must first be WILLING to endure the suffering itself. It is only in the endurance that positives such as strength, determination and forbearance rise up to bring us out of the dark abyss.
On the other hand, the book’s strength can also be its weakness. By this, what I mean is that while the focus of the book is about grief for the loss of a child and how to deal with it, I found that most of the chapters lacked focus. Although every chapter has a title to it, I found it difficult to pinpoint the specifics of the content of each chapter to its title. Reading each chapter is like reading someone’s meandering thoughts in her diary on her sufferings with her grief, and at some points, it gets repetitive, as in expressing the same things all over again but using different words. This can cause readers to lose focus and continued interest in reading the book.
I rate this book by Anniruth 3 out of 4 because despite the seeming lack of focus in the chapters, it is still a good book to pick up. If the reader is not too picky about structure but is happy to open to pages at random, there is bound to be some sentence or phrase there that will stick out to remind us that in the midst of our feelings of grief and sadness, life is still beautiful as long as we make the effort to look for it.
Readers who feel immense pain and loss over the death of a loved one, especially one’s own child, should be able to find solace in reading this book and identify with the grief expressed through Anniruth’s writing. Even if like me, you have not experienced the pain and grief as such a loss can bring, you can still find inspiration and motivation through the many nuggets of stand alone wisdom that are interspersed throughout the book . Who knows, should we find ourselves wallowing in self pity one gloomy and rainy day, won’t we be glad to have The Ultimate Truth lying just within our reach1!
******
The Ultimate Love
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Latest Review: How To Be Successful by M. Curtis McCoy
