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Running with Scissors meets Bewitched in this irresistible memoir, as Philip Smith describes growing up in 1960s Miami with his decorator father, who one day discovers he has the miraculous power to talk to the dead and heal the sick.
After a full day of creating beautiful interiors for the rich and famous, Lew Smith would come home, take off his tie, and get down to his real work as a psychic healer who miraculously cured thousands of people. For his son, Philip, watching his father transform himself, at a moment's notice, from gracious society decorator into a healer with supernatural powers was a bit like living with Clark Kent and Superman.
Walking Through Walls is Philip Smith's astonishing memoir of growing up in a household where séances, talking spirits, and exorcisms were daily occurrences, and inexplicable psychic healings resulted in visitors suddenly discarding their crutches and wheelchairs or being cured of fatal diseases.
While there are benefits to having a miracle man in the house, Philip soon discovers the downside of living with a father who psychically knows everything he is doing. Surrounded by invisible spirits who tend to behave like nagging relatives, Philip looks for ways to escape his mystical home life -- including forays into sex, surfing, and even Scientology.
By turns hilarious and profound, Walking Through Walls recounts Philip Smith's often bizarre but always magical coming of age in a household that felt like a cross between Lourdes and the set of Rosemary's Baby, and shows how he managed to map out his own identity in the shadow of a father who, truly, loomed larger than life itself.
- Sales Rank: #959502 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Atria Books
- Published on: 2009-10-13
- Released on: 2009-10-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.75" h x 1.00" w x 5.56" l, .81 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
Smith, an artist and former managing editor of GQ magazine, reflects on his youth in 1960s Miami. He wanted a father who mowed the lawn, drank beer, and fell asleep in front of the TV. Instead, his dad, Lew Smith, was a successful interior decorator, who went through a macrobiotic transformation and began tuning into mystical vibrations. Young Philip was introduced to fasting and yogic diets, while Lew explored esoteric spirituality, reincarnation, Bach Flower Remedies and such metaphysical arcana as the akashic records, an ethereal Library of Congress of every soul in human history: [Philip] wasn't sure if this endless invisible database also included reruns of I Love Lucy or Perry Mason, but it probably did. After a 1968 encounter with famed trance medium Arthur Ford, Lew found his true calling as a psychic healer, and overnight our isolated house became Lourdes central. Smith's fine flair for waggish anecdotes is especially evident in his riotous recall of being suckered into Scientology at age 17. He looks back at his father with much affection in this mirthful memoir that bounces between the comic and the cosmic. Smith is a gifted humorist, and readers are certain to request more merriment. (Sept. 16)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Starred Review. In this astounding coming-of-age story, Smith, former managing editor of GQ, describes his father's transformation from Miami's famed decorator-to-the-wealthy into something altogether more strange—the then-backwater city's resident psychic healer who performed exorcisms and seances and rid both the rich and the poor of infections, cancer, and paralysis. Here's the twist: according to the author, Lew Smith could truly heal people. The problem is that the author wanted a normal dad, one who sells insurance, comes home from work, has a beer, and falls asleep in front of the TV. A 1970s teen rebellion ensued. Hilarious and touching; for fans of the goofball and paranormal.—Elizabeth Brinkley
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Philip Smith's compellingly readable memoir of his father -- a psychic, exorcist, hands-on-healer, and...decorator! -- is as entertaining as it is bizarre, all the way to its unexpected and deeply moving conclusion." -- John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The City of Falling Angels
"At long last, a subject worthy of a memoir. Philip Smith recounts the story of his father, a visionary, a psychic healer, and a saint, with matter-of-fact grace, without ever denying how difficult it was to be the child of a man with unlimited supernatural gifts. Lew Smith was a man we are unlikely to ever see the likes of again, one of the few fathers in literature whose death I mourned as if I'd known him. I wish I had known him; he was a miracle. Every page of Walking Through Walls reminded me of how vast the universe, and how meager the dreams of our philosophies." -- Haven Kimmel, author of Iodine and A Girl Named Zippy
"A startling story, beautifully told. If you believe that science can explain everything, this book might change your mind. Walking Through Walls is a window into a fascinating world through the sensitive eyes of an observant son." -- Delia Ephron, author of Hanging Up
"Walking Through Walls is a funny and poignant memoir about growing up in a family as strange and mysterious as the Bermuda Triangle -- Dad is a psychic healer with a day job interior decorating for dictators, the dead speak, and adolescence is an altered state of grace." -- Dirk Wittenborn, author of Pharmakon and Fierce People
Most helpful customer reviews
36 of 38 people found the following review helpful.
Remarkable and fascinating memoir
By Amazon Customer
This engaging memoir is so readable that I could hardly put it down. It is the story of a family living in Florida, with the author growing up in the 1950's and coming of age during the '60s. His mother is a wonderful, lovely woman. It sounds patronizing to say she is "colorful," and I don't mean it like that. She is a beautiful, interesting person who walks to her own music. His father is a successful interior decorator and there is a great story of him being kidnapped to work in a palace in Haiti during the 1950's.
The idyllic life changes, however, when the father begins to acquire a "spiritual healing power." Soon there is talk of reading the Akashic record, using pendulums to discern truth, psychic healings, etc. A large part of the book is about the strain this puts on the marriage, and how difficult, yet also magical, it was to grow up around all of this.
I don't want to say too much more, since I am borderline spoiler already. But this is a worthwhile read, and I hope it makes bestseller.
On a personal note, I also grew up with a family member who claimed this kind of ability. I felt happy, in a bittersweet way, that it wasn't so bad for the author. For me, I felt like I lived in a Stephen King book sometimes. I usually hate this sort of thing (imagine growing up in Rose Red or the Overlook!). I state this to show how compelling and well written this book is!
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
charts a son's pathway to acceptance, then admiration
By Amazon Customer
This book contains two stories: one, the account of Lew Smith's metamorphosis from society decorator to psychic healer and two, the author's pathway from embarrassment, to acceptance and finally to admiration for his father's talents.
We are able to follow Lew Smith's metaphysical pathway and growth, as well as the hurdles and derision he must overcome in practicing his healing. For those who have a firm belief in the superiority of allopathic medicine, the recounting of Lew Smith's use of healing energies, discussion of the etheric body and use of a pendulum to diagnosis disease will probably have a few eyes rolling. For those who share Smith's view of modern medicine ("You know what your wonderful doctors do? They give you some pills that make you sicker than when you walked in the door. Then they give you more pills to counteract the first pills..."), you'll wish he could have taught in a medical school and been given the latitude to introduce an entirely new aspect to the teaching of medical care. Instead, Lew Smith had to contend with visits from FDA inspectors, confrontations with arrogant doctors and being hauled away by police when he tries to help an accident victim.
Being "normal" is the life wish of most kids and we see the author's struggle for normal in statements such as "At the age of ten, I was not about to sit down and simply be the only acid-balanced, nontoxic macrobiotic kid in all of Miami." The dualism of his growing up - "out of necessity I developed a dual personality. During school hours I needed to appear as normal as possible, in order to avoid being beaten up or laughed out of class...", and his desire for a 'normal' father - "What I really wanted was a father who mowed the lawn, drank beer, and fell asleep in front of the TV."
Fortunately for all who read this book, Philip does take in his father's lessons ("I didn't want to tell my father, but since that first lesson, I had been practicing the pendulum a lot...") because this acceptance of his father's teachings allows for a better and more insightful retelling of his father's talents. The culmination of the author's coming full circle and fully appreciating what a remarkable man his father was comes with his eulogy at his father's funeral: "...my father devoted his life to creating the future of medicine. He struggled against official ignorance and prejudice...We may not begin to even understand what he did until the next century...I know he would want his work to live on...".
Lew Smith's son has ensured his story and work will live on in this wonderful book.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy"
By Antonio C. L. Leite
The wide approval that this book already received in the 188 reviews presented here says enough about its quality and offers the certainty that reading it will bring joy along with an uplifting motivation to anyone who decide to take the chance. Notwithstanding the negative literary critics that a few reviewers tried to impose on the author's skills and credibility, what truly comes out of this incredibly well written and fun reading story, is a remarkable lesson which can be worthy of consideration and service to anyone of us in terms of being open minded in regard to the many facets of life.
My understanding is that the main purpose of this memoir is a very clear one, and from the author's stand point, it is also clear to me that he did a wonderful job in depicting the facts with clarity and humility. Apart from this, I don't think that the author left any room to a belief that he at any rate tried to convince anyone or had any expectation of an overall acceptance on the part of the incurable skeptics neither the blind faith followers, about the truthfulness of the facts he portrayed in the book. To me one of the most valuable and important peculiarities in this book in terms of credibility is the fact that the author is not a psychic himself nor a religious catechizer who tries to win over adherence. In this manner, claims such as "I tend to be suspicious anyway", are completely inappropriate and misplaced, to say the least.
It is time for men and women to break the trammels imposed by orthodox religions and the hard core skepticism of the pundits of the scientific establishment, by opening their eyes and minds to the overwhelming outpouring of the so called "paranormal phenomena", which have been the object of serious studies to appear in a vast amount of books and scholarly papers in the last two centuries. It is about time for each one of us to get acquainted with these matters and educate ourselves towards the reality of life, death and the afterlife. After all, as the great Bernard Shaw warned us "Death is the ultimate statistic - one out of one of us dies".
Philip's memoir is a delightful reading that offers us a great opportunity to get rid of the ignorance which yet prevails about these matters. As the incomparable William Shakespeare once stated "Ignorance is a sin. Knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven". In this manner, Philip's outstanding book and the intricacies and struggles that prevails in this incredible story of a family relationship, should be seen and considered without the bias or barriers of suspicion to become rather a ground basis for one to go further in the worthy studies of these matters.
For those who are not familiar with the facts and puzzles that this book brings about, it is important to remember that no matter how amazing, intriguing and unusual it may appear, the fact is that it is not a novelty. On the contrary, along with the massive outpouring of a late literature approaching these matters, there are also hundreds of books and thousands of scholarly papers produced in the last century trying to decipher and give a rational explanation to these phenomena. Hundreds of men and women of science along with great scholars have carefully studied the problem and given most of their precious time to study these matters to bring forth a practical and reasonable theory, whose main goal is to help humanity in its march towards progress. Unfortunately, for a long time their works and achievements were kept under the rugs of bigotry in format of rare copies of books standing in the shelves of a lost and inaccessible library. Now, thanks to the miracle of the internet and the wonder of globalization, this precious knowledge shines upon the light of day. They can be of great help to those who are humble, free from bias or prejudice and are willing to learn how to dig deep into knowing thyself.
Undoubtedly, Mr. Philip's memoir are a delightful reading that I highly recommend to anyone. By reading it, let us take the opportunity to rid ourselves of bias and prejudice, and give heed to the warning of one of the greatest American philosopher, psychologist, free thinker and psychical researcher, William James, who stated the following:
"We may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing to conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all". Antonio Leite
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