An unconventional personal account that’s gloomy but fascinating.
A 20-something American hoping for inner peace is burdened by paranoia and distrust in the second installment of this memoir.
Balor’s (Outbursts of a Privileged White Man, 2018) debut was a year’s worth of journal entries. His latest follows the same structure, beginning in mid-November 2017 when he lived with his father. It was a tense situation, as the author could hear the upstairs tenants speaking derogatorily about his often drunk father. So he left his father’s home and his grocery store job to live at a community known as “the Peaceorama.” Though it was initially a calm endeavor, Balor soon believed others at the Peaceorama resented him. He also had believed for some time that he was a paranoid schizophrenic and often “heard” other people’s thoughts, which generally condemned him. He ultimately moved back in with his father and worked at a series of jobs. His outlandish behavior was sometimes deliberate, such as mowing his father’s lawn in khakis, an “old man mask,” and a gaiter on his head. He, however, feared that his “acting” as a psychopath was a cover for a genuine psychosis. By the end of this installment of his story, Balor has isolated himself in an attic apartment, worried he might be the monster that some people perceived. Like the author’s preceding book, this lengthy memoir often takes a stream-of-consciousness approach. There are also quotes, poetry, and fragments of stories that occasionally interrupt Balor’s narrative. Nevertheless, there’s a discernible focus on Balor’s search for some form of normality. For example, he tried to find a steady job and made efforts to befriend people, even those who clearly didn’t like him. Though it’s a primarily somber peek into the author’s life, the book offers morsels of humor. In one of them Balor speaks to a woman at an unemployment agency as if she were an artificial intelligence, and his random thoughts are sometimes darkly comical: “Soup is an excellent method to poison someone.”
An unconventional personal account that’s gloomy but fascinating.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5320-8708-0
Page Count: 482
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he...
The latest from French writer/filmmaker Carrère (My Life as a Russian Novel, 2010, etc.) is an awkward but intermittently touching hybrid of novel and autobiography.
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he describes powerfully. Carrère and his partner, Hélène, then return to Paris—and do so with a mutual devotion that's been renewed and deepened by all they've witnessed. Back in France, Hélène's sister Juliette, a magistrate and mother of three small daughters, has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that crippled her in adolescence. After her death, Carrère decides to write an oblique tribute and an investigation into the ravages of grief. He focuses first on Juliette's colleague and intimate friend Étienne, himself an amputee and survivor of childhood cancer, and a man in whose talkativeness and strength Carrère sees parallels to himself ("He liked to talk about himself. It's my way, he said, of talking to and about others, and he remarked astutely that it was my way, too”). Étienne is a perceptive, dignified person and a loyal, loving friend, and Carrère's portrait of him—including an unexpectedly fascinating foray into Étienne and Juliette's chief professional accomplishment, which was to tap the new European courts for help in overturning longtime French precedents that advantaged credit-card companies over small borrowers—is impressive. Less successful is Carrère's account of Juliette's widower, Patrice, an unworldly cartoonist whom he admires for his fortitude but seems to consider something of a simpleton. Now and again, especially in the Étienne sections, Carrère's meditations pay off in fresh, pungent insights, and his account of Juliette's last days and of the aftermath (especially for her daughters) is quietly harrowing.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9261-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
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
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