This book, like one of its myriad cocktails, is dry, dirty and surprisingly refreshing.
Debut comedic memoir based on the 20-something author's popular blog.
In 2010, Nugent graduated from college with a degree in creative writing, "diploma in one hand, margarita in the other." Despite an exhaustive job search, she found herself unemployed and broke. Facing impending student-loan payments, she opted to move back to her parents' home. Nugent writes with a sardonic sense of humor, rife with self-deprecation, about the trials, financial and otherwise, of being an educated, jobless, single woman in her early 20s. Almost all of her stories involve alcohol, and early on, Nugent even encourages readers to drink while reading her book. In a list of tips on how to save money, she suggests foregoing coffee in favor of using "good old-fashioned fear of the unknown to keep yourself awake." After a few months, she successfully launched herself out of the nest and into a walk-up apartment in Brooklyn, where she eventually returned to working in retail. Her forays into "adulthood" included hosting a party featuring a game of strip poker and a few tame, vaguely described experiments with online dating. With limited outlets to publish her writing as a freelancer, she started her personal blog, The Frenemy, as a platform to vent her frustrations and humorous autobiographical experiences. Her memoir reads like a blog: a series of loosely structured essays and rants that work on their own as conversational pieces but collectively lack overall cohesion. Nugent's voice comes across as loyal and tough, and her sense of humor and authenticity will appeal to readers going through related chapters in their own post-college lives.
This book, like one of its myriad cocktails, is dry, dirty and surprisingly refreshing.Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-452-29818-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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