Framed by narrator Jim Jackson’s high school reunion in the middle-class Southern town of Princeton, W.Va., George’s novel...
A 60-year-old man comes to terms with growing up with an alcoholic father in George’s debut novel.
Framed by narrator Jim Jackson’s high school reunion in the middle-class Southern town of Princeton, W.Va., George’s novel spends the bulk of its pages on Jim’s memories of his rather conventional teenage pastimes: ham radio, dances, assisting the school’s venerated football team. In 11th grade, Jim gets a thrilling gig as a Sunday morning radio announcer at the local station and has fun as quasi-roadie to his friends’ rock ’n’ roll band. These ’50s scenes of suburban sock hops and polite teenagers are pleasant to read, but it’s hard to tell if they could possibly have been as bland and unthreatening as George depicts. The worst thing any teen ever does is flirt with someone else’s girlfriend, and despite some discussion of segregation and racism, everyone presented directly is nice as nice can be. Into this narrative of old-fashioned civility thrusts, again and again, the specter of Jim’s alcoholic father, who appears at the end of every chapter or so, coming home drunk from the Elks Club, sometimes vomiting on the front porch. George puts some emotional force into these scenes, but their impact on Jim is only telegraphed. We never get to feel young Jim’s emotions, or even really see them, which greatly lessens the novel’s power. In later sections, the narrator comes right out and tells us that his father’s alcoholism has stunted his own development as a husband and father, but he does so in clinical language: “My inability to engage was a serious flaw”; “Looking back, we were trapped in a web of dysfunctionality.” We abruptly learn that the narrator now has a “sullen” 11-year-old son with “hard blue eyes,” with whom he has a “brittle and unfeeling” relationship, but no history of the relationship is given that could provide insight or invite the reader’s empathy. Still, final chapters on the physical declines and deaths of both Jim’s mother and mother-in-law are moving. And by the end of the book, George conveys Jim’s frustration with his own emotional frigidity and failings as a husband and father in a way that finally edges into raw feeling.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1468529678
Page Count: 312
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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