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    The Still Point of the Turning World
    The Still Point of the Turning World
    The Still Point of the Turning World
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Still Point of the Turning World

    Written by Emily Rapp

    Narrated by Ali Ahn

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Like all mothers, Emily Rapp had ambitious plans for her first and only child, Ronan. He would be smart, loyal, physically fearless, and level-headed, but fun. He would be good at crossword puzzles like his father. He would be an avid skier like his mother. Rapp would speak to him in foreign languages and give him the best education. But all of these plans changed when Ronan was diagnosed at nine months old with Tay-Sachs disease, a rare and always-fatal degenerative disorder. Ronan was not expected to live beyond the age of three; he would be permanently stalled at a developmental level of six months. Rapp and her husband were forced to re-evaluate everything they thought they knew about parenting. They would have to learn to live with their child in the moment; to find happiness in the midst of sorrow; to parent without a future. The Still Point of the Turning World is the story of a mother' s journey through grief and beyond it. Rapp' s response to her son' s diagnosis was a belief that she needed to " make my world big"-- to make sense of her family' s situation through art, literature, philosophy, theology and myth. Drawing on a broad range of thinkers and writers, from C.S. Lewis to Sylvia Plath, Hegel to Mary Shelley' s Frankenstein, Rapp learns what wisdom there is to be gained from parenting a terminally ill child. In luminous, exquisitely moving prose she re-examines our most fundamental assumptions about what it means to be a good parent, to be a success, and to live a meaningful life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 7, 2013
    ISBN9781470360689
    The Still Point of the Turning World
    Author

    Emily Rapp

    A former Fulbright scholarship recipient, Emily Rapp has received numerous awards and recognition for her work, including from the Atlantic Monthly, StoryQuarterly, and the Corporation of Yaddo. In 2006 she was the Philip Roth Writerin- Residence at Bucknell University. She is currently a professor in the M.F.A. program at Antioch University Los Angeles.

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    Reviews for The Still Point of the Turning World

    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      The Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp is an exceptionally beautiful memoir about parenting a terminally ill child. Rapp, through the use of exceptional prose, offers readers much to think about in regards to life and death, far beyond the traditional way of thinking. While the topic may sound like a rather grim one, The Still Point of the Turning World is beautifully written, and offers readers so much to think upon that I would recommend this book to readers and especially book discussion groups.
    • 4/5
      The Still Point of the Turning World (TSPOTTW) is to having a child with a fatal genetic disorder what Cheryl Strayed's Wild is to hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. In other words, the book is ostensibly about one thing, but it's actually about quite another. Both TSPOTTW and Wild are about the emotional lives of the authors. TSPOTTW goes into great detail about Emily Rapp's worldwide travels and her literary interests, and tells much less about her son's brief life with Tay-Sach's disease. The book also lacks the scientific and medical detail that would make it valuable to a broader audience. On the one hand it seems crass to criticize a book by a mother whose child died after a long, slow, heartbreaking decline. But on the other, I felt about this book the same way I felt about Wild. I'm glad I read both books, but by the time I got to the conclusions of both of them, I had had quite enough of both authors.