book review life on delay

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

LIFE ON DELAY

Making peace with a stutter.

by John Hendrickson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 17, 2023

This appealing and perceptive memoir takes an unsentimental look at life with a speech disorder.

A senior editor at the Atlantic reflects on how his lifelong stutter has shaped his life and relationships.

Hendrickson began having difficulties with his speech in kindergarten, and his teacher suggested that his parents have him evaluated by a speech pathologist. Soon he began to visit the dreaded “little room,” the school therapist’s office, while he and his parents hoped that his stutter would go away naturally, as some do, but “it got worse.” Hendrickson poignantly chronicles his efforts to navigate adolescence and high school with a fear of speaking, discovering along the way that alcohol “greatly diminish[ed]” his stutter. He also writes about suffering from a depressive episode in his late teens. “Depression doesn’t care if you acknowledge its existence,” he writes. “It’s quiet. It’s patient….I’ve learned to manage it, but I still don’t know if I’ll fully return to that predepression point.” In the midsection of the narrative, the author writes about his college years and the beginning of his career as a journalist, culminating in his 2019 interview with Joe Biden, “the most famous living stutterer.” Hendrickson also describes the beginning of his relationship with his wife, Liz, who has dystonia, a neuromuscular disorder. As the author notes, the ways in which their bodies “betray” them became a point of commonality. Hendrickson’s approach to his subject is both personal and investigative, as he recounts his interviews with his family, his former teachers and therapists, fellow stutterers, and doctors who study speech disorder. One of the most interesting interview subjects is Dr. Courtney Byrd, the director of the country’s “preeminent stuttering research center,” whose “controversial” take is that “a lot of the stigma that’s related to stuttering begins in the office of the speech-language pathologist.” The dramatic tension in the book is mainly derived from Hendrickson’s fraught relationship with his brother, who bullied the author as a child, mocking his stutter mercilessly.

Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023

ISBN: 978-0-593-31913-0

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS | HEALTH & FITNESS | PSYCHOLOGY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

Share your opinion of this book

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.

Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

More by Brandon Stanton

BOOK REVIEW

by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton

LOVE, PAMELA

by Pamela Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2023

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.

According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that ." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy , which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023

ISBN: 9780063226562

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

More About This Book

SEEN & HEARD

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

• Presidential Search
• Editor's Pick

Progressive Labor Party Organizes Solidarity March With Harvard Yard Encampment

Encampment Protesters Briefly Raise 3 Palestinian Flags Over Harvard Yard

Mayor Wu Cancels Harvard Event After Affinity Groups Withdraw Over Emerson Encampment Police Response

Harvard Yard To Remain Indefinitely Closed Amid Encampment

HUPD Chief Says Harvard Yard Encampment is Peaceful, Defends Students’ Right to Protest

‘Life On Delay’ Review: A Touching Ode to Self-Acceptance

Words are the way a person communicates with the world. But what if words aren’t available? What if the language isn’t there, or what if the words are floating just out of reach?

In his poignant memoir, “Life On Delay,” John Hendrickson invites the reader to understand his own relationship with words — the ones he says and the ones he doesn’t. A lifelong stutterer, Hendrickson uses “Life On Delay” to communicate the immense impact of spoken word.

Hendrickson harnesses words every day as a staff writer at The Atlantic. After publishing a 2019 article discussing Joe Biden’s stutter , he was offered the chance to speak on MSNBC. He took it.

“You’d like to think that when these moments arise you stride toward them – chin up, chest out, triumphant horns blaring somewhere in the background,” Henderson writes of the experience. “Right now I’m just scared.”

He had spent his whole life avoiding public speaking and was suddenly thrust into the limelight. Yet, he chose to be interviewed not just this once, but multiple times on national television. While his story may initially draw readers due to its Biden connection, Hendrickson’s tale is strong enough to stand on its own.

In addition to the professional opportunities provided by the article’s success, Hendrickson’s article also sparked an outpouring of letters from fellow people who stutter. Hendrickson writes that for the first time in his life, he felt like a part of a community. As a result of the story’s popularity, Hendrickson embarked on a voyage through his own past, slowly piecing together his own relationship with stuttering from his diagnosis as a kindergartner up to the present day. In his memoir, Hendrickson talks to old teachers, girlfriends, college buddies, and bosses – those who had seen his stuttering first hand. Most importantly, he dives into his relationships with his parents and older brother; his tumultuous relationship with his family threads throughout the novel, haunting him long after both he and his brother leave the confines of their home.

As Hendrickson interviews those from his past, he weaves his personal experiences with current research on stuttering as well as the experiences of both private and public figures who struggle with stuttering. At times the patchwork of lives throughout the work felt random, cutting from one story to the next. But in other moments, the stories bled into each other, reminding the reader of the commonality of the human experience and encouraging greater compassion for all. His journalistic tendencies shine through as he reports on what others have learned.

This memoir revolves around others' and society’s responses to those that have a stutter. Hendrickson describes the painful, physical reactions that others have – pulling their head back, looking away, wincing — when watching him stutter:

“It’s primal, this reaction: another body literally retreating from you, the problem,” he writes.

But this is not just a book about stuttering. Even though the novel focuses on stuttering, the book highlights the common challenge of struggling to communicate with those around you. Whether it’s struggling to communicate in a new language or suffering from a disease that impedes speech, readers of many communities can relate to Hendrickson’s experiences. And at the end of the day, Hendrickson can find peace with his past and his stutter, providing inspiration for readers to find peace with their own challenges, too.

—Staff writer Sophia N. Downs can be reached at [email protected] .

Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.

clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

He was once ashamed of his stutter. Then he embraced it.

In ‘life on delay,’ john hendrickson recalls how he overcame the resentment and fear that his disfluency caused.

Every fall, I teach a graduate class about the practical matters of being a writer and sustaining a writing life. All incoming MFA students enroll, and I begin the first class with spoken self-introductions. This past fall, one student had an obvious stutter. He has not overcome it the way that President Biden, our university’s past president and my childhood handyman have. Instead, stuttering remains an integral part of this student’s spoken voice.

In “ Life on Delay: Making Peace With a Stutter ,” John Hendrickson writes of a similar experience as a student on the first day of high school 20 years ago. “I try to steady my breathing,” he recounts. “I clench my fingers into tight fists. . . . I’m struggling to calculate the number of seconds each kid takes times the number of students left to go.” Did my student have the same agonizing response to this activity? The young Hendrickson stuttered his way through his introduction another seven times that day. In a later interview, the teacher recalled his own guilt, anxiety and doubt about the way he handled the situation.

What surprised me last semester wasn’t my student’s stutter but my lack of anxiety. Early in my career, I probably would have sought out university resources to help this student, just as faculty members do when students reveal learning disabilities. Admittedly, I might have pitied him, as he stammered in front of his peers. I’d like to think that, as writers, we value each individual voice in its cadences, pauses and gestures. My student took the time he needed to say what he wanted to say, but did I — or did other students — give him what Hendrickson calls “The Look”? The Look is “the moment the listener suddenly realizes something is wrong with you, that moment they subtly wince. . . . The judgement. The pity. . . . The Look never leaves you.”

When Hendrickson joined the staff at the Atlantic, he had spent almost three decades fielding The Look. “I know my stutter can feel like a waste of time — of yours, of mine — and that it has the power to embarrass both of us,” he writes. He employed avoidance, especially steering clear of talking about his stutter. Then, four months into his new job, he pitched the idea of writing about presidential candidate Joe Biden as a self-defined gaffe machine. He told the editor, “I could pick up on all the little things Biden was doing to keep his lingering stutter at bay — his blinks, his word substitutions, his head and hand movements.” Hendrickson procrastinated for two months before requesting an interview with Biden. As he continued to work on that article, he had trouble sleeping and eating. He started losing his hair. What he wrote in his notebook applied to himself as much as it did to Biden: “ Biden won’t really admit he still stutters. What does that mean?” Even as Hendrickson readied himself to appear on MSNBC after the article went viral, “a large part of me wanted to keep hiding.”

“Life on Delay” is the mold-breaking story of stuttering that Hendrickson was able to tell — and grow into — once he stopped hiding. In response to that Biden article, notes poured in, and he replied to all of them. He has “had conversations with stutterers from all over the world” in order “to know how other people deal with it.” He talks about his stutter with strangers, friends and family, including Matt, the brother who bullied him. This full-hearted memoir grapples with shame, resentment and fear as Hendrickson answers with courage and compassion one of the most meaningful questions in life: “How do you accept an aspect of yourself that you’re taught at such an early age to hate?”

While 2 percent of children stutter , according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, most outgrow this disfluency, often without intervention. Stuttering, which was renamed “childhood-onset fluency disorder” in the most recent “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , ” is more prevalent in men and those with a family history of disfluency. Hendrickson falls into these two categories, and his experiences also echo studies that indicate those who continue to stutter face anxiety, self-loathing and discrimination that affect their relationships and careers. In conversation with psychiatry professor Gerald Maguire, Hendrickson also recognizes connections between stuttering, obsessive tendencies and use of alcohol to improve fluency. While “Life on Delay” focuses on Hendrickson’s stammering life, this memoir astutely illuminates the complexity of disfluency more broadly.

One of the most thought-provoking sections draws from an interview with writer-musician JJJJJerome Ellis, who says: “A time limit assumes that all people have relatively equal access to time through their speech, which is not true. . . . I don’t actually know how long it will take me to say something until I have to say it.” It’s eye-opening for Hendrickson to see someone who “has reclaimed the power of his stutter,” right down to using multiple J’s in his first name. What might it mean to set aside notions of deficit and, instead, celebrate the range of human voices? In this context, stuttering is a disability not because of the speech impairment but because social norms haven’t adapted to it. What if we listened more patiently?

This powerful flipping of responsibility in disfluency is echoed by Austin Kleon, who is known for his guides to creativity. In describing his son Owen’s stutter to Hendrickson, Kleon chooses positive adjectives like “profound.” Hendrickson, who faced negative experiences growing up, understands that when a stutterer can acknowledge a lack of fluency and doesn’t have to hide or try to fit in, daily life improves. “Crucially,” Hendrickson writes, “Owen was taught to self-identify as a stutterer” under the care of Courtney Byrd, a professor who heads a top stuttering research center at the University of Texas at Austin. Byrd’s approach has resulted in a majority of her team’s patients reporting “a significantly lower degree of bullying, depression, and anxiety than those who learn only fluency-shaping techniques.”

By contrast, in college Hendrickson avoided oral assignments, with encouragement from his professors, which nearly cost him his degree. He even admits, “I’ve never had the courage to leave an outgoing message on my iPhone.” Tackling a stutter without shame or reticence, as Owen Kleon does, represents an appealing alternative in which communication is a shared responsibility.

Hendrickson’s difficult relationship with his brother has long left them at odds. In the last chapter of “Life on Delay,” Hendrickson seems to approach a reconciliation. His brother, now the father of two sons, wants his children to have a stronger relationship. He notes that his sons are separated by the same number of years as he and John are. He acknowledges his past cruel behavior toward his brother, and he’s ashamed. He apologizes for making John’s childhood worse. “I just, that’s just — something about a child being in pain fills my eyes up as a parent now,” he says.

Hendrickson has had a hard time forgiving the torment his brother inflicted on him growing up. But he responds with an empathy that is his — and the book’s — trademark. He tells Matt that he himself has come a long way in understanding and accepting himself. “I have to open my mind and my heart … to believing other people are capable of change,” he says. “It would be … hypocritical of me, it would be foolish of me, ignorant of me … to think that I’m capable of change … and another person … isn’t, you know?”

“Life on Delay” recasts stuttering and, in doing so, challenges long-standing attitudes toward disability. By drawing deftly from personal experience, research, others’ stories and his wellspring of empathy, Hendrickson transforms the disorder he avoided claiming for decades into an invitation to all of us to demonstrate genuine humanity.

Anna Leahy is the author of “ Tumor ” and directs the MFA in creative writing program at Chapman University.

Life on Delay

Making Peace With a Stutter

By John Hendrickson

Knopf. 255 pp. $29

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Book Review: ‘Life on Delay,’ by John Hendrickson

John Hendrickson's memoir “Life on Delay” recounts his experience with this poorly understood neurological disorder, tracing an arc from frustration and isolation to acceptance and community. Continue reading at 'The New York Times'

[ The New York Times | 2023-01-18 10:00:22 UTC ] News tagged with: #book review #memoir

Other Publishing stories related to: 'Book Review: ‘Life on Delay,’ by John Hendrickson'

John Hendrickson's memoir “Life on Delay” recounts his experience with this poorly understood neurological disorder, tracing an arc from frustration and isolation to acceptance and community. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2023-01-18 10:00:22 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #memoir

Book review: 'Reading for My Life,' essays by John Leonard

This is a brilliant collection of writings on politics, social and cultural engagement and literary life.Reading for My Life Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-18 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #literary life #book review

Books: A teen reviews '#Neveragain,' a World War II tragedy comes to life and more book news

Welcome to the Books newsletter! I’m books editor Carolyn Kellogg, writing my last newsletter from our Spring Street address — next Friday we’ll be packing up for our new digs in El Segundo. THE BIG STORY When I saw that Parkland, Fla., shooting survivors David Hogg and his sister Lauren Hogg had... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-07-07 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #books newsletter ##neveragain #book news #el segundo #big story

Book Review: John Plotz on Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews John Plotz’s personal reading of a fantasy classic by Ursula K. Le Guin The American author Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) is widely regarded as one of the finest authors of what is broadly termed ‘speculative fiction’.... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2023-10-13 14:00:53 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #secret library #le guin #american author

Queen Elizabeth II: A Life in Book Reviews

On the occasion of the death of the Queen of England, we've rounded up a handful of reviews of books on the queen and her court that we've run over the years. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-09-13 04:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book reviews #ve rounded #ve run

Book Review: ‘The Gotti Wars,’ by John Gleeson

John Gleeson’s “The Gotti Wars” is a memoir about what it took to jail America’s star gangster. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2022-04-29 20:03:55 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #john gleeson #memoir

Book Review: ‘Silverview,’ by John le Carré

“Silverview” features a young bookstore owner in an English seaside town, caught up in an investigation involving two cunning spymasters. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-10-11 09:00:03 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #bookstore

Book Review: ‘On the House,’ by John Boehner

“On the House” is an anecdote-rich memoir by the former speaker of the House that fails to give readers the whole picture. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-04-09 13:05:40 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #john boehner #give readers #memoir

Rep. John Lewis’s Life Story Continues in ‘Run: Book One’

'Run: Book One', a posthumous work by the late civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, is the continuation of his National Book Award-winning graphic memoir The March trilogy. The book will be published by Abrams ComicArts in August 2021. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-03-31 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #john lewis #march trilogy #abrams comicarts #graphic memoir

John Bolton's bad reviews don't stop him topping US book charts

The Room Where It Happened, due out later this month if attempts to block publication fail, has received stinging early notices but is already Amazon’s No 1John Bolton’s damning indictment of the Trump presidency is topping bestseller charts in the US a week before its release, despite withering... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2020-06-18 11:54:13 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #trump presidency #last-ditch attempt #family created #dangerous man #mary trump #ijeoma oluo #robin diangelo #top spots #bestseller charts

Book review: Skin in the Game - Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

REVIEW: Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the Richard Wagner of uncertainty. While the Ring Cycle of the German composer/librettist portrayed the struggle of the gods in a series of operas, the Incerto series of books by the Lebanese-American author is devoted to humans - specifically how we deal with... Continue reading at Stuff

[ Stuff | 2018-03-03 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #daily life

Book review: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

Turtles All the Way Down is best-selling author John Green's first novel since 2012's runaway success, The Fault in Our Stars. While that book tackled the issue of teens with cancer, this book centres on a protagonist suffering from anxiety and obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviour. Green,... Continue reading at Stuff

[ Stuff | 2017-11-04 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #john green #book review #runaway success #book centres #main character

The literary life of Michiko Kakutani: the book critic's best feuds and reviews

The New York Times writer is stepping down from her role, leaving behind a remarkable career characterized by razor-sharp reviews and intra-literary rowsMichiko Kakutani, the New York Times’ revered chief book critic, announced she was stepping down from her post on Thursday after 38 years,... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2017-07-29 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #greek mythology

Lynne Truss: ‘A bad book review can kill you – look at the case of John Hawkesworth’

The tale of a hubristic Georgian book editor is an early example of trolling, and a lesson for us allThe case of the 18th-century man of letters John Hawkesworth is not often invoked, perhaps because no one has heard of him. Books of notable Georgians in England go straight from Hawke to Haydon.... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2017-01-13 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this |

Book review: 'Lives of the Novelists' by John Sutherland

These delightful biographies of 294 authors begin with John Bunyan in the 17th century and ends with Rana Dasgupta, born in 1971.My assignment: Read almost 300 literary biographies in more than 800 pages, all of English-language authors, beginning in the 17th century and ending in the present... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-04-01 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #reference book #17th century #rana dasgupta #present day

Book review: 'An Improbable Life' by Jim Abbott and Tim Brown

A coming-of-age story by former Angels pitcher Abbott is at its best when describing his influence as a role model off the field.Imperfect Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-04-01 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #coming-of-age story #role model

Books: The new Trump book, plus book reviews and news

For book lovers and politics fiends, 2018 has gotten off to a bang with the early publication of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” by Michael Wolff. Welcome to the new year! I’m Carolyn Kellogg with this week’s books newsletter. THE BIG STORY Excerpts from “Fire and Fury” that... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #books newsletter #trump book #book reviews #book lovers #michael wolff #carolyn kellogg

Book Review: Joseph Epstein’s New Memoir and Book of Essays

The editor and essayist Joseph Epstein looks back on his life and career in two new books. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2024-04-22 09:03:39 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #memoir

Book Review: ‘The Book of Love,’ by Kelly Link

In “The Book of Love,” the Pulitzer finalist and master of short stories pushes our understanding of what a fantasy novel can be. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2024-02-12 10:00:46 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #kelly link #pulitzer finalist #short stories

7 Book Review Podcasts for Discovering New Books

Book review podcasts are an engaging way to discover new books. Check out these podcasts across different genres, including All The Books! Continue reading at Book Riot

[ Book Riot | 2022-11-30 11:32:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review

Book and Film Globe

Books, Film, TV, Culture.

Does He Stutter?

In his memoir ‘Life On Delay,’ John Hendrickson beautifully gives voice to the struggles that all stutterers face

Senior Editor at The Atlantic John Hendrickson makes clear in his heartbreaking memoir, Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter, how his life experiences have made him a much more introspective and empathic man.  But it has also left him scarred from a lifetime of almost overwhelming challenges.  Think about it.  The most mundane experiences are fraught with danger; he always is aware his body can betray him.

Despite Hendrickson’s good looks, intelligence, and athletic ability, he always had to sit nervously in classes worried a teacher might call on him.  He had to endure endless taunting from peers.  When he worked up the courage to call a girl in junior high, he was tongue-tied by the time the young lady got on the phone. The next day at school he had to stomach what he would come to call “The Look,” which was watching someone recoil from his advances simply because he could not speak fluently.

Even though he faced here hardships, Hendrickson deserves high marks for his persistence in attempting to pursue a meaningful life and find an antidote to his loneliness.  His parents were of little help.  His mother took him countless speech therapists hoping one would finally ‘cure’ him.  But his father ignored his stutter and was emotionally unavailable to him. Worst of all, his brother, who had also stuttered but stopped doing so in kindergarten, became an aggressive child and a violent teen-ager who would torture his brother and mock his stutter.  One of the most difficult realizations for Hendrickson was thinking about how his parents witnessed this abuse and did little to stop it.

Hendrickson gained national attention writing a piece for The Atlantic on Joe Biden , who is a fellow stutterer.  Hendrickson is disappointed with how Biden frames his stuttering narrative as one of vanquishing his stutter when it was clear to Hendrickson he had not.  He heard how frequently Biden used ‘ahs’ and ‘uh’s” to maintain fluency, or substituted words at the last moment, when he realized he was having trouble getting a word out.  Hendrickson fantasized about how wonderful it would be if the President could admit he was a stutterer and that being one was all right.

There was no need for Biden to pretend he had achieved a level of perfection, when it was clear to all he had not. This interview  prompted Hendrickson to write this book, fueled by a growing defiance that insisted he needed to take possession of his identity as a stutterer and speak about the experience.  His psychotherapy sessions played a role in this realization.  His psychotherapist was not like his speech therapists who seemed to be continually grading him.  Or telling him to slow down which Hendrickson knew was simply code for telling him not to stutter so much.

He’s relieved that many of today’s speech therapists embrace treating the entire person, instead of focusing exclusively on perfecting fluency, which for many is an impossible task.  Or leads the stutterer to adopt a false persona that stifles their authenticity as an individual which can be extremely repressive.  We come to love Hendrickson early on in his narrative because he shows us that despite the cruelties thrust upon him, he remains purehearted.

Hendrickson describes what it is like to stutter.  He speaks of becoming blocked and gasping for air shocked at the power of his disfluency to paralyze his vocal cords.  Or other times when he attempts to say a multisyllabic word and gets hopelessly locked on one syllable before moving on to finish the word.  He explains how scientists know very little about the one percent of the world’s population who stutter and there is no consensus on what causes it.  Scientists are flummoxed by the fact that most stutters do not stutter at all when they sing or recite poetry.  Nor do they understand why most stutterers have trouble saying their names.

Hendrickson explains how he always hated the word stutter.  He writes, “When you’re young, you internalize that ‘stutter’ is an ugly word.  Everything about stutter is weird, those three t’s, the ‘uh’ in the middle that makes you think of ‘dumb.’  Stutter is painful and awkward and nobody wants to talk about it.”  He adds “What is it about stuttering that makes you bear the burden yourself?  There seems to be something that we experience that is so shameful.”  And you can’t talk about it, even though it is obvious.”

Hendrickson’s writing style has a vibrant immediacy to it that keeps you glued to the page.  We accompany him on his journey to recover from his childhood woundedness.  When he meets a girl with her own problems who embraces him wholeheartedly, we rejoice.  When he visits old teachers to find out what he was like in school, we listen attentively to the stories they tell him about being baffled as to how to treat him.  Should they call on him in class, or leave him alone so that nothing embarrassing might happen?

He recalls thinking frequently when he was eager to say something: “Is it better for me to speak and potentially embarrass myself or shut down and say nothing at all?”  But the Hendrickson who is interviewing them is not longer the little boy they once knew. He has become a grown man who realizes he must embrace a new philosophy about stuttering that is his birthright. He writes defiantly: “I understand that my stutter may make you cringe, laugh, recoil.  I know my stutter can feel like a waste of time—of yours, of mine—and that it has the power to embarrass both of us.  And I’ve begun to realize that the only way to understand it’s power is to talk about it.”

But when he returns to his childhood home things don’t go as smoothly.  His mother keeps repeating how she tried her best to help him.  His father explains he was afraid to speak to him about it because he sensed Hendrickson would reject him. And his brother can’t quite apologize for his horrific actions and seems at times to be going through the motions.  Hendrickson is forgiving of their shortcomings. He knows that his repressed Catholic family has many secrets that it swept under the rug and never confronted head-on, and he’s hesitant to be too assertive with them. It’s clear he loves them and doesn’t want to hurt them and recognizes he must come to terms with their limitations.  Every family has to find a way to survive and the Hendrickson family did so by ignoring what was right in front of them.

He continues on his own path to healing. His love of journalism leads him to score jobs, first with the Denver Post, and then with Rolling Stone , and eventually with The Atlantic where he feels at home even with his difficulties. His editors are exceedingly understanding and appreciate the talent and perspective he brings to them. He has difficulty with many aspects of his job such as using the telephone to interview people for pieces he is writing. His overall fluency has improved, and there are good days now that were never present earlier in his life. But there are difficult ones too. He loves writing and his eloquence on the page is always evident in his magazine pieces as it is in this first book.

We leave Hendrickson feeling he has shared with us some of his deepest intimacies. His life journey is a stellar example of what one can do if they refuse to give up.  We are envious of his drive and savvy, and his willingness to take risks, and most importantly, his dedication to speaking his personal truth.

 You May Also Like

• ← At Long Last
• Who’s Afraid of ‘Skinamarink’? →

Elaine Margolin

Elaine is a book critic for The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Times Literary Supplement, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jerusalem Post, Denver Post, and several literary journals. She has been reviewing books for over 20 years with a sense of continual wonder and joy. She tends to focus on non-fiction and biographies.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Why I Dread Saying My Own Name

Nearly every decision in my life has been shaped by my stutter.

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic , Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.       

O kay, here comes our waiter. I stare at the silverware. He clicks his pen. I’m always the last to order. Sometimes my mom tries to help me by tossing out what she thinks I want.

“Cheeseburger, John?”

“... Yyyy-uhh ... yyyueaah,” I force out.

If I’m lucky, there are no follow-up questions. I’m rarely lucky.

“And how would you like that cooked?” the waiter asks.

“... ... ... ... Mmm-muh ... mmm-edium.”

His face changes. I want it medium rare, but R ’s are hard, so I cut myself off.

“And what kind of cheese?”

Vowels are supposed to be easier, but I can never get through that first sound. I skip it altogether and go right for the consonant.

“... Mmmmmuh ... ... muhm-merican.”

Now our waiter understands that something is wrong. He shoots a nervous glance at my mom, who fires back a strained smile: Everything is fine. My son is fine .

“Okay, next question,” he says with stilted laughter. “Curly fries or regular?”

I want regular, but remember, R ’s are hard. Unfortunately C ’s are hard too. I’m trapped. I try a last-second word switch. Bad idea.

“... Eeeeeeee-uh ... eeee-uh ... ... eeee-uh, eei-ther.”

I close my menu and push it forward.

“And to drink?”

N early every decision in my life has been shaped by my struggle to speak. I’ve slinked away to the men’s room rather than say my name during introductions. I’ve stayed home to eat silently in front of the TV rather than struggle for a brief moment at a restaurant. I’ve let the house phone, and my cellphone, and my work phone ring and ring and ring rather than pick up to say hello.

“... Huh ... huh ... huh ...”

I can never get through the H .

I understand that my stutter may make you cringe, laugh, recoil. I know my stutter can feel like a waste of time—of yours, of mine—and that it has the power to embarrass both of us. And I’ve begun to realize that the only way to understand its power is to talk about it.

When I was first diagnosed with a speech impediment, in the fall of 1992, stuttering was viewed as something to be fixed, solved, cured—and fast!—before it’s too late. You don’t want your kid to grow up to be a stutterer .

Read: An ‘absolute explosion’ of stuttering breakthroughs

Few experts can even agree on the core stuttering “problem” —or how to effectively treat it, or how much to emphasize self-acceptance. Only since the turn of the millennium have scientists understood stuttering as a neurological disorder. But the research is still a bit of a mess. Some people will tell you that stuttering has to do with the language element of speech (turning our thoughts into words), while others believe that it’s more of a motor-control issue (telling our muscles how to form the sounds that make up those words).

Five to 10 percent of all kids exhibit some form of disfluency. Many, like me, start to stutter between the ages of 2 and 5. For at least 75 percent of these kids, the issue won’t follow them into adulthood. But if you still stutter at age 10, you’re likely to stutter to some extent for the rest of your life.

Stuttering is really an umbrella term used to describe a variety of hindrances in the course of saying a sentence. You probably know the classic stutter, that rapid-fire repetition: I have a st-st-st-st-stutter . But a stutter can also manifest as an unintended prolongation in the middle of a word: Do you want to go to the moooooo-ooo-oovies? Blocks are harder to explain.

Blocking on a word yields a heavy, all-encompassing silence. Dead air on the radio. You push at the first letter with everything you have, but seconds tick by and you can’t produce a sound. Some blocks can go on for a minute or more. A bad block can make you feel like you’re going to pass out. Blocking is like trying to push two positively charged magnets together: You get close, really close, and you think they’re about to finally touch, but they never do. An immense pressure builds inside your chest. You gasp for air and start again. Remember: This is just one word . You may block on the next word too.

Stuttering is partly a hereditary phenomenon. A little over a decade ago, the geneticist Dennis Drayna identified three gene mutations related to stuttered speech . We now know there are at least four “stuttering genes,” and more are likely to emerge in the coming years. But even the genetic aspect is murky: Stuttering isn’t passed down from parent to offspring in a clear dominant or recessive pattern . Even when it comes to identical twins, only one of them might stutter.

The average speech-language pathologist, or SLP, is taught to treat multiple disorders, including enunciation challenges (think of someone who has trouble articulating an R sound) and swallowing issues. Yet many therapists are ill-equipped to handle a multilayered problem like stuttering. Of the roughly 150,000 SLPs in the United States, fewer than 150 are board-certified stuttering specialists. Even today, the medical community is divided over how to effectively help a person with a stutter. Many teachers don’t know how to deal with it either. It’s lonely. We’re told that 3 million Americans talk this way , but it doesn’t feel that common. You may have a sister or dad or grandparent who stutters, but in most cases, there’s only one kid in class who stutters: you .

My kindergarten teacher, Ms. Bickford, was the first person to notice an issue with my speech. One afternoon she brought it up with my mom, who called our pediatrician, who referred her to a speech pathologist, who determined that I indeed had a problem but couldn’t offer much in the way of help. We waited for a while, hoping it would get better on its own. It got worse. My next option was to see the multipurpose therapist in the little room at school.

I attended a Catholic elementary school in Washington, D.C. My parents could afford it only because my mom cut a deal with the principal: She’d volunteer as the substitute nurse in exchange for discounted tuition. On the days she showed up at school for duty, I’d head to the nurse’s office in the basement and eat lunch with her on a laminated placemat. I loved those afternoons. But to get down there to see her, I had to walk past the little room. I hated that room. Every time I entered that room, I felt like a failure.

T here’s the knock. Kids stare as I stand to leave class. I walk down two flights of slate steps, turn the corner, and enter the little room. Everything in the little room is little: little table, little chair, little bookshelf. The decor is infantilizing. I’ve always been tall and gangly. At 7, my knees barely fit under the table. Most little rooms are peppered with the same five or 10 motivational posters: neon block letters, emphatic italics, maybe an iceberg or some other visual metaphor to explain your complex existence. This little room has a strange brown carpet that I stare into when the school therapist brings up my problem. She’s careful never to use the word stutter .

Okay, let’s start from the beginning .

There’s a stack of books on the table that are meant for people younger than me. Most sentences in these books are composed of one-syllable words. The vowels on the page are emphasized—underlined or in bold—a visual cue for me to stretch out that sound. Today we’re going to practice reading “ car as “cuuuuhhhh-aaarrr.” This is embarrassing. I know what car sounds like. I know how other people say car . Doing this exercise makes me feel like an idiot; not only do I have trouble speaking, but now it seems like I can’t read. Every time I block on the C , I sense a pinch of frustration from across the table. But maybe I’m imagining it. After enough attempts, I can read one whole sentence in a breathy, robotic monotone.

“Thuuuhhhh cuuuuhhhh-aaarrrr drooooove faaaaaaast dowwwwwn thuuuuhhhhh rrroooaaaad.”

For some reason, this way of speaking is considered a monumental success. I think the way I just read that is more embarrassing than my stutter. But I have to keep doing it, because it’s the Big Rule: Take your time .

Read: Doctors are failing patients with disabilities

Have you ever told someone who stutters to take their time? Next time you see them, ask how take your time feels. Take your time is a polite and loaded alternative to what you really mean, which is Please stop stuttering . Yet a distressing amount of speech therapy boils down to those three words.

I n his influential 1956 book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , the sociologist Erving Goffman argued that in every social interaction, we are playing a part on an invisible stage. We want people to like us, to believe in us—no one wants to be labeled a fraud. Each time we speak, we may earn someone’s respect or lose it. We go to great lengths to sound smart, because we know that strong communicators are deemed worthy of esteem. Alex Trebek’s peerless ability to enunciate phrases during his 37-year run on Jeopardy transformed him into an icon. You can probably hear Trebek’s voice in your head right now: the clarity, the dignity, the confidence, the poise. America loved Trebek because, among other things, he was very good at saying words.

Stutterers, by contrast, are often portrayed in pop culture as idiots, or liars, or simply incompetent. In the 1992 comedy My Cousin Vinny , people wince as the stuttering public defender blocks horribly throughout his opening statement. One juror’s jaw drops in shock. (Austin Pendleton, a stuttering actor, played the part to an almost vaudevillian degree—something he later regretted; he’s said the performance “haunts” him .) In Michael Bay’s 2001 soapy blockbuster, Pearl Harbor , crucial seconds are wasted on the morning of December 7, 1941, because Red, a soldier who stutters, can’t speak under pressure. Red stumbles around the barracks gritting his teeth, trying to force out the news: “The JJJJ-JJJaps are here!” He eventually says it, but it’s too late: Enemy gunfire pierces the room where his friends are sleeping. Thanks to Red and his stupid stutter, more people than necessary have now died at Pearl Harbor.

A person who stutters spends their life racing against an internal clock.

How long have I been talking?

How long do I have until this person walks away?

When you’re a kid, there’s a quieter, slower, more insidious ticking:

Am I going to beat this before it’s too late?

A fter I wrote about Joe Biden’s stutter in 2019, I began digging deeper into my own personal history with the disorder. One day I tracked down my second-grade teacher, Ms. Samson, and asked if she remembered anything about the way I spoke.

From the January/February 2020 issue: Joe Biden’s stutter, and mine

“I love the fact that you’re writing about this and putting it out there, because, gosh, from a teacher’s point of view, there’s not a lot—I mean, I wasn’t trained …” She searched for the words. “I wasn’t told how to handle this.”

Back then, we didn’t have a cafeteria—we’d eat lunch in our classroom. Ms. Samson kept a little radio on the corner of her desk. At lunchtime, she’d tune in to WBIG Oldies 100, and the space in front of the whiteboard would become the second-grade dance floor. Each afternoon was like a kids’ wedding reception, and I couldn’t wait for it to start. I’d wolf down my turkey on white then push back my chair and dart to the front of the class. I knew that the station’s midday DJ, Kathy Whiteside, had queued up a total hit parade: the Four Tops, the Supremes, the Temptations, Sam and Dave. This was an ideal time to work on my Running Man, or to whip out an invisible towel and do the Twist.

When Ms. Samson cranked her radio, my shoulders dropped and my lungs felt full. We looked like doofuses up there in our khaki pants or plaid skirts, but we were a unit of doofuses. This has special meaning when you’re the class stutterer. An hour ago I was flustered and out of breath, pushing and pulling at a missing word, feeling that familiar sweat drip down the back of my neck. Now I’m just another kid doing the swim to “Under the Boardwalk.” One day I sashay over to Michelle B. We giggle at each other. A new song starts. Jackie Wilson’s voice lifts me higher and higher. Then the music stops and I crash back to Earth.

“Your face would turn blotchy. Really, really red,” Ms. Samson told me. “You would cut your comments short because it was just too much work, or you figured, I lost the audience . But your impulse to participate—that’s how I knew: He’s thinking. He’s thinking and he wants to talk . That was the hardest part.”

This is the tension that stutterers live with: Is it better for me to speak and potentially embarrass myself, or to shut down and say nothing at all? Neither approach yields happiness. As a young stutterer, you start to pick up little tricks to force out words. Specifically, you start moving other parts of your body when your speech breaks down.

I still do this, and I hate it. I don’t know why it works, but it does: When I’m caught on a word, I can get through a jammed sound much faster if I wiggle my right foot. Blocked on that B ? Bounce your knee! Unfortunately these secondary behaviors quickly become muscle memory. Sometimes they morph into tics. They also have diminishing returns: A subtle rub of your hands in January won’t have the same conquering effect on a block in February. So that means you’re stuttering for seconds at a time and moving other parts of your body like a weirdo. It’s exhausting. The curse of these secondary behaviors is that they can be just as uncomfortable as your stutter.

Eventually, I stopped going to the little room and began seeing a new speech therapist once a week at a clinic after school. Every Wednesday, Dr. Tom would bound into the waiting room and greet me with a high five. He grew up in a big Mississippi family and spoke with a warm country drawl. He oozed patience.

This arrangement was immediately better: no more leaving class, no more kids’ books. Dr. Tom’s philosophy was to pair fluency-shaping strategies with things I’d encounter in my daily life, like board games. We tore through hours of Trouble, pressing down on the translucent dome to make the imprisoned die pop. As I moved my blue men around the board, I’d practice techniques to try to smooth out my speech. If we read passages out loud, we’d use my actual homework.

Dr. Tom’s go-to technique was a popular strategy called “easy onset.” It’s a spiritual cousin to “cuuuuhhhh-aaarrr,” but with more emphasis on the first sound of a word. The objective is to ease into the opening letter with a light touch, stretch the vowel, then shorten your exaggeration over time. No two stutterers struggle with the same collection of sounds, but every stutterer is haunted by specific vowels and consonant clusters. Many who stutter come to dread the act of saying their own name. People say their names more frequently than any other proper noun, after all, and stutterers tend to be extra disfluent when we meet new people.

My jaw locks when I go to form the J in John . I typically enter a long, painful block, then bark out the word at full volume: … … … … … … … … JOHN! Sometimes my J manifests as a rapid repetition, like a machine gun, or a Buick that won’t start: Jjjjjjjjjjjjjjohn . I’ve wasted whole afternoons fantasizing about what life might be like with another name. Why didn’t my parents choose Michael? All I’d have to do is thread that M to the I . The second syllable plops out, like a raindrop on a creek. Michael. I’ve said Michael so many times that it’s lost all meaning: Michael, Michael , Miiiichael. (Of course, if I were Michael, I’d probably block on the M .)

Stuttering is an invisible disability until the moment it manifests. To stutter is to make hundreds of awful first impressions. And an awkward exchange between two people affects not just the person being awkward, but the person forced to deal with said awkwardness. A stutterer may enter a room full of “normal” people and temporarily pass as a fellow “normal,” but the moment they open their mouth—the second that jagged speech hits another set of eyes and ears—it’s over. As Erving Goffman notes: “At such moments the individual whose presentation has been discredited may feel ashamed while the others present may feel hostile, and all the participants may come to feel ill at ease, nonplussed, out of countenance, embarrassed, experiencing the kind of anomy that is generated when the minute social system of face-to-face interaction breaks down.”

One phrase leaps out at me there: “may feel ashamed.” This assumes that the shame will pass. I wish I could pinpoint the moment when shame changed from something that periodically washed over me to something I began lugging around every day like a backpack.

S ome days Dr. Tom and I would sit on the floor in front of a big mirror and study the movements of our mouths. This was harder than it sounds. The mirror ran the length of the wall, and there was nowhere else to look: I had to watch myself stutter. One day I sat close enough, with my eyes just a few inches away from the surface, that I could make out shadowy figures in a dark room on the other side of it. Discovering this was a little like learning the truth about Santa Claus: You mean everyone knows but me? There was a hidden microphone somewhere in our room. The space on the other side had little speakers to transmit our voices. (You’ve seen this on a million cop shows.) I asked Dr. Tom who was in there watching us, and he told me: Occasionally, graduate students observed our sessions, and that was a good thing, because we were teaching them how to be therapists themselves. Other days, the shadowy figure was my mom.

I don’t blame her for watching. That’s what the doctors told her to do. I have sympathy for the parents of children who stutter. You want nothing more than for your kid to live a happy and successful life, and this new thing, this ugly problem, seems to threaten that. There’s also the aforementioned race against time: With each passing year, true fluency becomes harder to attain. Many health insurers don’t cover speech therapy, preventing people with limited funds from having the chance to work with experts. And yet, even many parents who have the means—those who dutifully shuttle their kids to appointments—leave with flawed advice:

Remind them to use their techniques! Tell them to take their time!

We stutterers anticipate our blocks well before they occur. We know how our brains and lungs and lips confront every letter of the alphabet. We know what we look like, what we sound like, what we make shared spaces feel like. We know that our stutter hasn’t gotten better, and that maybe it’s getting worse. We sense that most nights you, Mom and Dad, pray for it to go away. We know you believe you’re helping. We don’t know how else to tell you this: You’re not.

When a person of authority tells a young stutterer to “use your techniques,” they are confirming the stutterer’s worst fear: No one is listening to what you say, only how you say it. Enough of this makes you not want to talk at all. Fluency techniques may work in a therapy room, but, in most cases, they’re extremely hard to deploy in the real world. Speaking like a robot is not natural.

Read: Learning to love stuttering

“I could see you using strategies—you were doing things with your breath,” Ms. Samson told me. “And probably you had practiced whatever it was so much, and just couldn’t live up to what you knew you could do. I could see the defeat. You would put your head down and sort of walk back to your desk.”

What would it take for me to let go of that feeling? More than two decades later, I finally had a glimpse of an answer. If I was going to make peace with the shame of stuttering, I’d have to abandon the illusion that natural fluency might one day come, that my “two voices” would magically merge. I’ll always have a voice in my head that reads this sentence, and a much different voice that reads it out loud. I don’t like that fact about myself. But I don’t have to keep fighting it.

This article has been adapted from John Hendrickson’s forthcoming book, Life on Delay: Making Peace With a Stutter.

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

• Shopping Cart

Advanced Search

• Browse Our Shelves
• Best Sellers
• Digital Audiobooks
• Featured Titles
• New This Week
• Staff Recommended
• Suggestions for Kids
• Fiction Suggestions
• Nonfiction Suggestions
• Reading Lists
• Upcoming Events
• Ticketed Events
• Science Book Talks
• Past Events
• Video Archive
• Online Gift Codes
• University Clothing
• Goods & Gifts from Harvard Book Store
• Hours & Directions
• Newsletter Archive
• Frequent Buyer Program
• Signed First Edition Club
• Signed New Voices in Fiction Club
• Harvard Square Book Circle
• Off-Site Book Sales
• Corporate & Special Sales
• Print on Demand

• All Our Shelves
• Academic New Arrivals
• New Hardcover - Biography
• New Hardcover - Fiction
• New Hardcover - Nonfiction
• New Titles - Paperback
• African American Studies
• Anthologies
• Anthropology / Archaeology
• Architecture
• Asia & The Pacific
• Astronomy / Geology
• Boston / Cambridge / New England
• Business & Management
• Career Guides
• Child Care / Childbirth / Adoption
• Children's Board Books
• Children's Picture Books
• Children's Activity Books
• Children's Beginning Readers
• Children's Middle Grade
• Children's Gift Books
• Children's Nonfiction
• Children's/Teen Graphic Novels
• Teen Nonfiction
• Young Adult
• Classical Studies
• Cognitive Science / Linguistics
• College Guides
• Cultural & Critical Theory
• Education - Higher Ed
• Environment / Sustainablity
• European History
• Exam Preps / Outlines
• Games & Hobbies
• Gender Studies / Gay & Lesbian
• Gift / Seasonal Books
• Globalization
• Graphic Novels
• Hardcover Classics
• Health / Fitness / Med Ref
• Islamic Studies
• Large Print
• Latin America / Caribbean
• Law & Legal Issues
• Literary Crit & Biography
• Local Economy
• Mathematics
• Media Studies
• Middle East
• Myths / Tales / Legends
• Native American
• Paperback Favorites
• Performing Arts / Acting
• Personal Finance
• Personal Growth
• Photography
• Physics / Chemistry
• Poetry Criticism
• Ref / English Lang Dict & Thes
• Ref / Foreign Lang Dict / Phrase
• Reference - General
• Religion - Christianity
• Religion - Comparative
• Religion - Eastern
• Romance & Erotica
• Science Fiction
• Short Introductions
• Technology, Culture & Media
• Theology / Religious Studies
• Travel Atlases & Maps
• Travel Lit / Adventure
• Urban Studies
• Wines And Spirits
• Women's Studies
• World History
• Writing Style And Publishing

Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter

An intimate, candid memoir about a lifelong struggle to speak. • “Soulful...Hendrickson provides a raw, intimate look at his life with a stutter. It’s a profoundly moving book that will reshape the way you think about people living with this condition.”— Esquire

“Brims with empathy and honesty. It moved me in ways that I haven’t experienced before. It’s fantastic.”—Clint Smith, #1  New York Times  best-selling author of  How the Word Is Passed “I can’t remember the last time I read a book that made me want to both cry and cheer so much, often at the same time.”—Robert Kolker, #1  New York Times  best-selling author of  Hidden Valley Road In the fall of 2019, John Hendrickson wrote a groundbreaking story for  The Atlantic  about Joe Biden’s decades-long journey with stuttering, as well as his own. The article went viral, reaching readers around the world and altering the course of Hendrickson’s life. Overnight, he was forced to publicly confront an element of himself that still caused him great pain. He soon learned he wasn’t alone with his feelings: strangers who stutter began sending him their own personal stories, something that continues to this day. Now, in this reported memoir, Hendrickson takes us deep inside the mind and heart of a stutterer as he sets out to answer lingering questions about himself and his condition that he was often too afraid to ask. In  Life on Delay , Hendrickson writes candidly about bullying, substance abuse, depression, isolation, and other issues stutterers like him face daily. He explores the intricate family dynamics surrounding his own stutter and revisits key people from his past in unguarded interviews. Readers get an over-the-shoulder view of his childhood; his career as a journalist, which once seemed impossible; and his search for a romantic partner. Along the way, Hendrickson guides us through the evolution of speech therapy, the controversial quest for a “magic pill” to end stuttering, and the burgeoning self-help movement within the stuttering community. Beyond his own experiences, he shares portraits of fellow stutterers who have changed his life, and he writes about a pioneering doctor who is upending the field of speech therapy. Life on Delay  is an indelible account of perseverance, a soulful narrative about not giving up, and a glimpse into the process of making peace with our past and present selves.

There are no customer reviews for this item yet.

Classic Totes

Tote bags and pouches in a variety of styles, sizes, and designs , plus mugs, bookmarks, and more!

Shipping & Pickup

We ship anywhere in the U.S. and orders of $75+ ship free via media mail!

Get the Book Marks Bulletin

Email address:

• Categories Fiction Fantasy Graphic Novels Historical Horror Literary Literature in Translation Mystery, Crime, & Thriller Poetry Romance Speculative Story Collections Non-Fiction Art Biography Criticism Culture Essays Film & TV Graphic Nonfiction Health History Investigative Journalism Memoir Music Nature Politics Religion Science Social Sciences Sports Technology Travel True Crime

April 22 – April 26, 2024

• Marian Bull recommends eight cookbooks worth reading cover to cover
• Colin Dickey considers Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ legacy
• Kaveh Akbar on his obsessive pursuit of basketball cards

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Briefly Noted

Palo Alto , by Malcolm Harris (Little, Brown) . A useful counter to Silicon Valley’s self-mythologizing, this history of Palo Alto begins in the late nineteenth century, with the state-funded genocide of Alta Indians by settlers and the coming of the railroad, which led, via the fortune of Leland Stanford, to the establishment of Stanford University (“the pseudostate governing Palo Alto”). Harris highlights the city’s connection to the horrors of napalm, Japanese internment, and eugenics, and notes that many of the early tech companies in the area began “in the space between the military and academia.” Their success, he writes, “represents the triumph of software over hardware, of advertising over production, of monopoly over competition, of capital over labor.”

Life on Delay , by John Hendrickson (Knopf) . “Nearly every decision in my life has been shaped by my struggle to speak,” Hendrickson writes in this moving exploration of stuttering. A stutterer since childhood, he spent years in therapy, waiting in vain “for this strange thing to exit my body.” Many stutterers do largely overcome their impediment (including the actress Emily Blunt, whom Hendrickson interviews), but others never do. Why this is so remains a neuroscientific mystery. Hendrickson presents a wealth of fascinating detail (virtually all stutterers, for instance, can sing and recite fluently), but the real draw lies in his account of his personal experiences, which convey something essential about the challenge of being human.

The Best Books of 2023

Read our reviews of the year’s notable new fiction and nonfiction.

The Sun Walks Down , by Fiona McFarlane (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) . Set in rural Australia in the late nineteenth century, this ambitious novel assembles a band of characters—including a white farmer, an Aboriginal farmhand, and a Swedish painter—who are drawn together by the disappearance, in a dust storm, of a six-year-old boy. McFarlane’s figures emerge in intricate detail, defined by their petty desires, their moral imperfections, and their relationship both to the cataclysm of colonization and to the grandiosity of the landscape and the sun, which, for some, takes on near-divine significance. “There’s no way to describe these skies,” the painter writes to a colleague in Europe. “If I had to try, I would say that they are light shipwrecked by dark.”

Collected Works , by Lydia Sandgren, translated from the Swedish by Agnes Broomé (Astra) . Poised at the intersection of life and art, reality and imagination, this novel blends the thrill of mystery with the curiosity and depth of philosophical inquiry. Fifteen years after Cecilia Berg goes missing, her husband, Martin, is haunted by memories of their shared youthful intellectual ambitions, by the artistic struggles of their friend Gustav, and by professional and family worries. Narrated alternately by Martin and his daughter, Rakel, the novel refracts Cecilia’s absence through the literary and artistic concerns of those who remain. Rakel reflects that a picture “is always created at the expense of another picture.” She says, “The Cecilia of Gustav’s paintings pushed another Cecilia out of the frame. . . . And who was she?”

Books & Fiction

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Barry Blitt

By Meg Bernhard

By Richard Brody

By Helen Shaw

• Kindle Store
• Kindle eBooks
• Biographies & Memoirs

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Audiobook Price: $13.78 $13.78

Save: $0.79 $0.79 (6%)

Buy for others

Buying and sending ebooks to others.

• Select quantity
• Buy and send eBooks
• Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter Kindle Edition

• Print length 260 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Vintage
• Publication date January 17, 2023
• File size 945 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

Customers who bought this item also bought

From the Publisher

Editorial reviews, about the author, product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09X3TWND5
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (January 17, 2023)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 17, 2023
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 945 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 260 pages
• #3 in Speech & Pronunciation
• #19 in Speech
• #70 in Biographies of Medical Professionals (Kindle Store)

About the author

John hendrickson.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Advertisement

Supported by

An Appraisal

Helen Vendler Believed Poetry Matters

She devoted her life to showing us how and why.

• Share full article

By A.O. Scott

Defenses of poetry by modern poets tend to accentuate the negative. “ I too, dislike it ,” says Marianne Moore, taking for granted that you feel the same way. “ Poetry makes nothing happen ,” W.H. Auden admits. “A mug’s game,” T.S. Eliot calls it. William Carlos Williams observes that “ it is difficult to get the news from poems .” The bad news about poetry is that it’s obscure, difficult, marginal — a trivial pursuit in a culture preoccupied with other fancies.

The good news is that nobody told Helen Vendler. Vendler, who died this week at 90 , was an admired professor and a tireless, sometimes combative critic. In both those roles she was, above all, a reader of poems. Not an ideal reader (every writer knows there’s no such thing), but an exemplary everyday reader. She read poetry because she liked it, because it stirred her to thought and feeling, because she believed it mattered in the world.

“To know that someone out there is writing down your century, your generation, your language, your life,” she wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1972 , “makes you long for news of yourself, for those authentic tidings of invisible things, as Wordsworth called them, that only come in the interpretation of life voiced by poetry.” This was by way of saluting James Merrill as “one of our indispensable poets,” but Vendler was also making a case for the indispensability of poetry itself, in the most direct and personal terms. Poetry matters insofar as it matters to you.

If it does — if, like me, you have spent at least some of your life over the past half century or so looking at poems — you are likely to find yourself in Vendler’s debt. And also, sometimes, in what can feel like a personal quarrel with her.

She was such a ubiquitous presence — the go-to poetry reviewer for serious, nonspecialist publications like The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and this one — and wrote with such calm, rigorous authority, that some resentment was inevitable. The breadth of her knowledge was formidable, but her taste could seem narrow, her enthusiasm a form of establishment-friendly gatekeeping.

She upheld a canon of the English lyric, of first-person poems grounded in strong feeling, passed down from Shakespeare and George Herbert (she wrote books about both) through the Romantics to moderns like Yeats, Auden and, above all, Wallace Stevens. Many of the contemporary poets she praised, like Merrill and Robert Lowell, could be assimilated to that lineage. She was suspicious of more experimental or avant-garde tendencies, and skeptical of poetry overtly political or overly personal. Her criticism, too, avoided the theoretical leaps and sweeping cultural statements that animated literary discourse in and out of the academy.

But if poetry is worth anything, it is worth getting mad about, and it’s hardly Vendler’s fault that she was a more exacting, better read, and, finally, more generous reader of poetry than most of her critics. (Including this one: The first review I ever published was of two of her books; I remember being awe-struck and impatient, and finally outmatched.)

All of that matters much less now. Reviewing Lowell’s sonnets of the late 1960s and early ’70s, Vendler wrote that “the subjects of these poems will eventually become extinct, like all other natural species devoured by time, but the indelible mark of their impression on a single sensibility will remain.” This is true of her own criticism, which will last alongside the poems she cared about and provide future readers with a path back to them.

And also to the bedrock of her own inexhaustible faith in an art form that is perpetually maligned, ignored and misunderstood. A succinct statement of that belief comes from Wallace Stevens, the poet Vendler loved most and wrote about best. I suspect she would not mind giving him the last word.

The poem refreshes life so that we share, For a moment, the first idea … It satisfies Belief in an immaculate beginning And sends us, winged by an unconscious will, To an immaculate end.

A.O. Scott is a critic at large for The Times’s Book Review, writing about literature and ideas. He joined The Times in 2000 and was a film critic until early 2023. More about A.O. Scott

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

How did fan culture take over? And why is it so scary? Justin Taylor’s novel “Reboot” examines the convergence of entertainment , online arcana and conspiracy theory.

Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker unearth botany’s buried history  to figure out how our gardens grow.

A new photo book reorients dusty notions of a classic American pastime with  a stunning visual celebration of black rodeo.

Two hundred years after his death, this Romantic poet is still worth reading . Here’s what made Lord Byron so great.

Harvard’s recent decision to remove the binding of a notorious volume  in its library has thrown fresh light on a shadowy corner of the rare book world.

Bus stations. Traffic stops. Beaches. There’s no telling where you’ll find the next story based in Accra, Ghana’s capital . Peace Adzo Medie shares some of her favorites.

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

• Work & Careers
• Life & Arts

Become an FT subscriber

Try unlimited access Only $1 for 4 weeks

Then $75 per month. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Cancel anytime during your trial.

• Global news & analysis
• Expert opinion
• Special features
• FirstFT newsletter
• Videos & Podcasts
• Android & iOS app
• FT Edit app
• 10 gift articles per month

Explore more offers.

Standard digital.

• FT Digital Edition

Premium Digital

Print + premium digital, weekend print + standard digital, weekend print + premium digital.

Today's FT newspaper for easy reading on any device. This does not include ft.com or FT App access.

• 10 additional gift articles per month
• Global news & analysis
• Exclusive FT analysis
• Videos & Podcasts
• FT App on Android & iOS
• Everything in Standard Digital
• Premium newsletters
• Weekday Print Edition
• FT Weekend Print delivery
• Everything in Premium Digital

Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

• Everything in Print

Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

Terms & Conditions apply

Explore our full range of subscriptions.

Why the ft.

See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times.

International Edition

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Iran women's protests are the focus of 'Persepolis' author Marjane Satrapi's new book

Eleanor Beardsley

Marjane Satrapi, a graphic novelist, holds her latest book Woman, Life, Freedom , in her home in Paris, France. Eleanor Beardsley/ NPR hide caption

Marjane Satrapi, a graphic novelist, holds her latest book Woman, Life, Freedom , in her home in Paris, France.

PARIS — In her bright Paris apartment, Marjane Satrapi makes coffee, her cat rolling at a visitor's feet. The author of the internationally acclaimed graphic novel Persepolis , about a young girl coming of age during Iran's Islamic Revolution, Satrapi thought she had left comics behind. She's mostly been working in film in recent years.

Middle East

In iran, women's resistance defies state clampdown a year after mahsa amini's death.

But she was pulled back to the medium after a young Iranian woman died at the hands of Iran's morality police for not properly wearing her hijab. The death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 sparked months of protests across Iran. Satrapi gets goosebumps thinking about it. She says it was history in the making.

"These adolescents are like, 'Stop, we want another world,'" she says, speaking of the massive protests begun by young Iranian women and joined by young men. "If it was only young girls, I would be extremely scared. But the girls were carried by the young guys. This is the difference. A real feminist revolution cannot succeed until men understand that equality between them and women is also good for them!"

Veiled Iranian women hold Iran flags and placards while attending a pro-government rally in Tehran, in December 2022. The rally was held in opposition to unrest following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in September 2022. Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

Veiled Iranian women hold Iran flags and placards while attending a pro-government rally in Tehran, in December 2022. The rally was held in opposition to unrest following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in September 2022.

Satrapi says the protests were the first real pushback against the patriarchal culture underpinning Iran's clerical regime, which came to power in 1979.

Iran's protesters find inspiration in a Kurdish revolutionary slogan

The title of her newest book adopts the demonstrators' slogan: Woman, Life, Freedom. The anthology — a collaboration among more than 20 artists, activists, journalists and academics — depicts in words and art the historic uprising and its context.

One of the contributors is Abbas Milani, who fled Iran in 1987 and is now the director of the Iranian studies program at Stanford University. Like Satrapi, Milani believes the recent protests were very different from the 1979 revolution that replaced the U.S.-supported, secular regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi with a Shiite theocracy.

"The Iranian women's movement, in its civil disobedience, defiance and persistence, is absolutely one of the most important civil disobedience movements of the 20th century," Milani says. "It is completely comparable to the civil disobedience movement in the U.S. led by Martin Luther King."

Milani says only Satrapi, with her connections and international stature, could bring together such a diverse and talented group and turn out this book in just five months. Woman, Life, Freedom was published in Persian and French for the first anniversary of Amini's death last September. The English-language version, translated by Una Dimitrijević and published by Seven Stories Press, came out in March.

Spanish artist Patricia Bolaños says she thought it was a prank when she got an email about working on the project with the famed author of Persepolis . It was only when Satrapi got in touch herself that she believed it. Bolaños, who lives in New York, says Persepolis is one of her favorite graphic novels but she knew little about Iran.

Book Reviews

A look at the tumultuous life of 'persepolis' as it turns 20.

So she worked with one of the project's Iran scholars to illustrate the book's chapter on the "Aghazadeh," or noble-born, a term connoting nepotism and corruption that's used to describe the children of Iran's elite, its ruling mullahs and Revolutionary Guards.

An illustration by Patricia Bolaños featured in Satrapi's book Woman, Life, Freedom. Marjane Satrapi hide caption

An illustration by Patricia Bolaños featured in Satrapi's book Woman, Life, Freedom.

Bolaños says she was inspired by one of their Instagram accounts, "Rich Kids of Tehran," which showed the Aghazadeh wearing bikinis on French Riviera beaches, drinking alcohol and partying.

"It was really scary because these are the kids of those setting the rules, but they don't follow the rules," she says. "For me, it was like, how is this possible? Especially for the women. These kids are perpetuating this corrupt system. And at certain moments they have to collide with this other world of other women fighting and dying for freedom."

Bolaños wanted to know what those moments are like. The last cartoon in her chapter shows a stylish Aghazadeh checking her Instagram account. "She watches videos of women burning veils and yelling 'freedom,'" says Bolaños, "and the reader sees it reflected in her sunglasses. And someone asks her, what are you watching? And she says... nothing."

Satrapi says it was important to involve people from outside Iran in the project to show Iranians the world is watching, and embracing the protesters' cause. The author believes nobody would read a 280-page book on the history and society of Iran. But a graphic narrative, she says, draws readers in.

"A comic has this advantage, because the first language of the human being is drawing," says Satrapi. "So it's an immediate relationship that we have with image. Instead of using 1,000 words, you draw an image and the human being understands what this image is about."

Jailed Iranian women's rights activist wins 2023 Nobel Peace Prize

She flips through the book. "Each artist has his own style," she says, pausing on the chapter titled "In the Hellhole of Evin Prison."

"Mana Neyestani was actually in Evin prison," she says, "so he was the best one to draw this part."

The Iranian cartoonist , who now lives in France, is a recipient of the Cartoonists Rights Network International Award for courage in editorial cartooning. He was jailed for three months in 2006 because of a cartoon he drew in an Iranian publication that was considered offensive.

Satrapi drew the chapter on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the notoriously vicious guardians of the 1979 revolution. "Without the Revolutionary Guards, the Islamic Republic wouldn't last a month," she writes. "They control the weapons and the finances. For now, at least..."

Satrapi says her hand ached as she worked on that chapter. "I didn't want to draw their dirty faces," she says.

Illustration by Marjane Satrapi about the Iranian revolutionary guards. Marjane Satrapi hide caption

Illustration by Marjane Satrapi about the Iranian revolutionary guards.

The 55-year-old artist, who has lived in Paris for more than 25 years, says her generation was exhausted after living through the Islamic Revolution, followed by a massive wave of political executions and the eight-year Iran-Iraq war.

But Satrapi believes the current generation, with educated women and the mobilizing power of internet, will bring change.

"It's such courage," she says. "And this is why I believe that this revolution, sooner or later, is going to give its results."

Milani agrees. "I think it's the beginning of the end of the regime," he says. "This doesn't mean the regime will fall tomorrow because it still has money, a small base of support, and it still has the brutality to kill hundreds and imprison thousands. But it's delusional to think that this corrupt, incompetent regime of septuagenarian and nonagenarian clerics, whose ideas come from 1,400 years ago, can rule the Iranian society of today, where more than 60% of college graduates are brilliant women, who in every domain inside and outside of Iran, have created marvels with their work."

'It's not over yet': Artists work to keep Iran's protests in view

Satrapi says the millions-strong Iranian diaspora can be a loudspeaker for what's going on in Iran, but change must come from within.

"It's not up to us," she says. "What am I going to decide for a young Iranian person who is in Iran? I have not put my feet back in my country in 25 years. So what am I going to tell them?"

Still, Satrapi has no doubt change will come. She says it's just a matter of time.

• Mahsa Amini
• graphic novel

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy audiobook review – a thrillingly blunt take on new motherhood

Narrator Simone Collins leans into the dark humour of life at the domestic coalface, where moments of fierce love jostle with soul-sapping drudgery

A thrillingly blunt account of new motherhood, Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor has been shortlisted for the Women’s prize, and finds its narrator addressing her baby, whom she calls Sailor, as she reports from life at the domestic coalface. Blending the profound and the soul-sappingly mundane, she talks of her fierce love for her son while navigating the purgatory of laundry, mealtimes, baby groups, trips to the playground, broken nights and exhaustion. In between relaying the routine of her days, she reflects on her altered identity – “I was just a woman! How has this not registered before?” ­– and observes the inequity of life as the mother of an infant where the working world is “an adult place from which I’ve been banished” and during which she has become an “indoor creature indentured to domesticity”.

The narrator is the Irish actor Simone Collins, who leans into Kilroy’s dark humour and the protagonist’s compulsive frankness, which leads her to swear vociferously at her little boy – who by now is nearly two – after he wanders off in Ikea. But the villain of the piece is her lazy, tactless husband who, on getting home from work, heaps judgment on his wife for her chaotic, frazzled state and who believes changing the occasional nappy qualifies him as an “involved father”. When he suggests his wife has postnatal depression, she duly erupts: “This is life-is-shit depression … I miss my old life like I’d miss a lover. I pine for it. I daydream about leaving you so that I can be with it again. You’d like to diagnose postnatal depression because then it’s not your fault.”

Soldier Sailor is available from Faber, 6hr 15min

Further listening

Capote’s Women Laurence Leamer, Hodder & Stoughton, 10hr 25min A gossipy group biography of the New York socialites, known as “swans”, who were friends with Truman Capote, among them Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy, and political activist Pamela Harriman. Carrington MacDuffie reads.

The Kellerby Code Jonny Sweet, Bolinda Audio, 10hr 57min Actor Jack Davenport narrates this Saltburn-esque tale of murder and social climbing set in an English country house and revolving around a duplicitous outsider named Edward.

• Audiobook of the week

Most viewed