A wonderfully written and inspiring exploration of a beautiful friendship.
A memoir celebrates a difficult but deep friendship in the Adirondacks.
Not long after settling into a corner of the Adirondacks, that huge wilderness area in upstate New York (Shaw was born and raised in Schenectady, just south of there), the author met Jon Cody. This man would change Shaw’s life in ways both obvious and subtle. Cody was loud, fearless, gregarious, generous—he would literally give you the shirt off his back if you admired it—and always alive with ideas. If anyone was “larger than life,” it was Cody. He was also one-armed, dyslexic, and a prodigious consumer (and dealer) of weed—big blunts all day long—and often other illegal substances. And seldom would he refuse a drink. The dealing supported him, but he was also a very talented and skillful worker in leather. Shaw, meanwhile, was seriously adrift, with vague ideas of becoming a writer. If he just kept imagining himself one (old story, that), someday, he trusted, the Writing Fairy would appear and anoint him as such. Meanwhile, he drifted from job to job (ski lift operator, hunting guide). Cody lived and held court in the Wigwam, a remnant of a building on an abandoned estate, where everyone was welcome: hunters, fishermen, drug enthusiasts, assorted lowlifes, and, of course, the author. Cody died alone there in 2015 after living his life on his own terms, a much-abused cliché but very true in his case. Shaw did what he could to create a proper memorial. The author, by the way, finally did become an accomplished writer and teacher. One imagines dyslexic Cody, whom Shaw used to read to (Jack London was a favorite), being proud, if somewhat bemused.
It’s no surprise that Shaw is a gifted writer—graceful, sensitive, and learned. This being the account of a male friendship, it is important to note that the relationship between the author and Cody was a bromance, not an affair reminiscent of Brokeback Mountain. Shaw is clear on that, but a real love did exist between these two men, and he deftly examines it with regard to Jung and other sources. This memoir is also a vibrant love letter to the Adirondacks, a hinterland of rough weather and encompassing forests and streams that breeds characters to rival (but not match) Cody. This is a book that invites readers to sink into it, to wish they were living in that wild, enticing place; casting a line in those trout streams; or just getting plastered in the bars (so many bars) while singing and dancing exuberantly and having a good friend like Cody—none too sober either. This pal would eventually drag them home or throw a blanket over them on his couch. Finally, the work is a stirring paean to friendship and need. What is this “Crazy Wisdom” the memoir’s title trumpets? readers may ask. Perhaps it refers to Cody’s wisdom of fearlessly owning his life, which gave Shaw the courage to finally take charge of his own destiny. People need heroes to make their ways in this world, even if those heroes are as starkly unlikely as Cody.
A wonderfully written and inspiring exploration of a beautiful friendship.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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