Although a little goes a long way, Uhle’s book will hit home with many readers.
An affecting portrait of a definitively dysfunctional family.
Uhle’s mother isn’t quite dead when Uhle walks into a florist’s and begins to make arrangements for a wreath, something that appalls the flower people. But, writes Uhle, executive director of the publishing company McSweeney’s, “mourning my mother and father was an endeavor that started so long ago that I couldn’t properly recall it.” What she was really mourning, she adds, was “reality and sanity, the facts as they appeared to everyone on Earth except my parents.” The insanity comes in many forms, some developing over many years. Mom, raised in modest circumstances, was a hoarder who even saved the morphine that Uhle’s father, dying of cancer, was supposed to take but didn’t: “Mom’s interest in the morphine was as nonsensical as her interest in accumulating anything else.” Mom piled up fabric, clothing, and especially food that frequently went to waste—and this in a household perpetually in financial straits, so much so that at one point the parents sneak the family out of their West Virginia apartment in the middle of the night to skip out on rent owed, making a new home across the line in Pennsylvania for a time, always trying to stay a step ahead of the creditors and collection agencies. Dad turns out to be a great dreamer and schemer, always feckless—and, in the end, criminal. Uhle’s memoir is a car-wreck sort of book in which we crane our necks to see what awful thing is going to happen next to disrupt her and her siblings’ lives. The memoir is well written, if at times distractingly repetitive, perhaps because her parents’ behavioral problems play out in much the same way incident after incident. Still, it has virtue in showing that no matter how odd one’s own family, there’s always someone, more often than not, who has an odder family still.
Although a little goes a long way, Uhle’s book will hit home with many readers.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9781668083444
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Summit/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.
An author’s trip to Venice takes a distinctly Borgesian turn.
In November 2020, soccer club Venizia F.C. offered Nigerian American author Madu a writing residency as part of its plan “to turn the team into a global entity of fashion, culture, and sports.” Flying to Venice for the fellowship, he felt guilty about leaving his immigrant parents, who were shocked to learn upon moving to the U.S. years earlier that their Nigerian teaching certifications were invalid, forcing his father to work as a stocking clerk at Rite Aid to support the family. Madu’s experiences in Venice are incidental to what is primarily a story about his family, especially his strained relationship with his father, who was disappointed with many of his son’s choices. Unfortunately, the author’s seeming disinterest in Venice renders much of the narrative colorless. He says the trip across the Ponte della Libertà bridge was “magical,” but nothing he describes—the “endless water on both sides,” the nearby seagulls—is particularly remarkable. Little in the text conveys a sense of place or the unique character of his surroundings. Madu is at his best when he focuses on family dynamics and his observations that, in the largely deserted city, “I was one of the few Black people around.” He cites Borges, giving special note to the author’s “The House of Asterion,” in which the minotaur “explains his situation as a creature and as a creature within the labyrinth” of multiple mirrors. This notion leads to the Borgesian turn in the book’s second half, when, in an extended sequence, Madu imagines himself transformed into a minotaur, with “the head of a bull” and his body “larger, thicker, powerful but also cumbersome.” It’s an engaging passage, although stylistically out of keeping with much of what has come before.
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781953368669
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
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