Gail Sheehy (1937–2020)

Having five years’ experience caregiving to my spouse, I appreciate what Gail Sheehy has set out to do in this book, outline the various phases of the caregiver experience, or “turnings” as she calls them. It’s a comfort to know that others feel what you feel and it’s valuable to know of the resources that Sheehy lists. The generalized trajectory of caregiving is interspersed with Sheehy’s own years-long care for her husband and with the stories of other caregivers, so the show more lessons are real and heartfelt. I thought several times while I was reading, “I wish someone had told me that before I experienced it!”
That being said, I’m afraid the book is considerably undercut by the rarified social circle lived in by Sheehy and her late husband, magazine editor/publisher Clay Felker. I couldn’t help thinking as I read, “Gee, maybe Tom Wolfe will come read his new essay to my wife, or I could call up Diane Sawyer for her advice, and maybe I’ll get the country’s best surgeons to give us a second opinion.” Mind you, I feel that we have our own wonderful resources for aid, medical and otherwise. How otherworldly Sheehy’s life must seem to so many poor and isolated caregivers who might read this book. I’m afraid that to many, the underlying message of the book will be undercut by the penthouse, the home in the Hamptons, and unwinding at a Mexican health spa.
It was Sheehy’s life, it was her experience, and I can make the argument that it wouldn’t have been honest for her to write it in any other way. And she is a gifted writer, so if you can put these considerations to one side while you read, the book will provide valuable insights, particularly at the outset of the caregiving journey. show less

Passages by Gail Sheehy is a book that I saw lying around the house a lot when I was a kid. Since I am writing a memoir about my mom, I thought I'd read some of her favorite books. Turns out to be perfect timing. It's about the various phases of life leading up to the mid-life crisis. According to Sheehy, when we are young adults, many of us rush into choosing a role so that we can "get on" with life. This may entail denying parts of ourselves in order to better conform to that role, whether show more it's as a wife and mother, or go-getter professional. As mid-life approaches, many people start to realize the narrowness of that role and the sacrifices demanded by taking it on. We throw off those self-imposed limits and start a second exploration of self, perhaps in a wiser and less hurried frame of mind, though more conscious of our own mortality. A great read and still relevant, even though it was written in the mid-70s. show less

Nope. Read a couple of her PASSAGES books and liked them very much, but DARING, Gail Sheehy's memoir, lacks the personal tone that a good memoir requires. Even in talking about her covering the Beatles' guru, the Maharishi, in India, or Tom Wolfe's coverage of the Black Panthers being feted by Leonard Bernstein and his celebrity friends, or the early days of New York magazine and the "new journalism" she was part of, Sheehy failed to engage my interest. And these are things that SHOULD show more engage, things I remember and lived through. I don't understand why she couldn't make such stuff sing, come alive. But she didn't. I was bored. A hundred pages was enough, and I gave it up as a bad buy. Blah. Not recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

This book is horrible. Fixating primarily on overachieving white people (and many more men than women), Sheehy draws "truths" from a ridiculously skewed data set. Even then her deductions seem to be of the pop psychology type. Like others of her ilk who appoint themselves to define trends, Sheehy bends the examples to fit her theses. She says that blue-collar data obtained from Family Circle magazine focus groups reinforced her conclusions, but the few times that she cites it, the data seems show more to refute them instead. Any book that can state the first transitional issue facing a man in his 50s is hair loss just can't be taken seriously. The 16 years that have transpired since she wrote it reinforce how trivial it is. What a waste of time. show less