An appealing literary memoir.
A poet's reflections on memorable individuals.
In deft, graceful essays, poet, literary critic, and librettist Gioia recalls six “people of potent personality” who shaped his vocation: Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Fitzgerald, who taught him as a graduate student at Harvard; John Cheever, whom Gioia met at Stanford, where he was studying business; writer James Dickey; Ronald Perry, a little-known poet whom Gioia never met; and the author’s Mexican uncle, who died when Gioia was a child and whose library of books, stored in Gioia’s family’s apartment, inspired his reading and his aspiration to be a writer. No one among his relatives or teachers, he reveals, “ever encouraged my reading or intellectual pursuits,” but he was encouraged by his uncle’s presence, felt through the books he left. The author pursued his literary ambitions at Harvard, where two professors stood out: the “prim, impeccably coiffured” Bishop, the “most self-effacing writer I have ever met”; and Fitzgerald, whose “many strengths harmonized so naturally that one simply enjoyed the music of his company. Being with him, I understood for the first time how legendary pilgrims recognized their next master.” Both contrasted favorably with their celebrated, hugely popular colleague Robert Lowell. Gioia preferred Bishop’s and Fitzgerald’s modesty and humility, qualities he found in Cheever, too, who had come to Stanford on a campus visit with his son. Cheever seemed to Gioia “more bright young man than sagacious patriarch,” and his “intelligence was enlivening.” An unfortunate meeting with Dickey came after Gioia published a negative review of one of his books: “It is often better not to meet the writers you admire.” Gioia’s connection with Perry also came from reviewing; Perry wrote to thank him for an appreciative review, and the two continued to correspond, planning to meet, finally, in New York. Gioia’s portrait of this “invisible poet” and their role in one another’s lives serves as a moving elegy.
An appealing literary memoir.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-58988-151-8
Page Count: 186
Publisher: Paul Dry Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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