An ambitious and striking comment on art, sanity, and human endeavor.
A writer explores his struggles with mental illness and the death of his father in this experimental memoir composed of a single run-on sentence.
The premise is quite simple: Cowen set out to write and publish the longest sentence ever in the English language without stopping to edit it along the way. The sentence quickly becomes a diary of sorts in which the author explores some of the pressing concerns of his life, including his perceived failures as a writer, his struggles with bipolar disorder (a condition he shared with his father), and his father’s recent suicide. “I haven’t been processing my grief the way I wanted to yet about my dad’s death,” writes Cowen when the subject initially rears its head, “and I’ve been wanting to write something about my dad, and his dad and me and maybe also my dad’s hero, Abraham Lincoln, as he is also said to have been mentally ill at times, or at least a melancholic.” Along the way, the author delves into the history of really long sentences, from William Faulkner and James Joyce to current world record holder, Jonathan Coe (Cowen checks in periodically to see if he’s beaten Coe yet), and similarly long-winded writers. The author also examines other figures suffering from bipolar disorder, like Kanye West, and any other bits of popular culture that stray into his mind. The book is written in a stream-of-consciousness style that veers from critical commentary to myopically metafictional sections about the process of writing the sentence: “Recursivity is something I have been doing with these commas, and the ands, and the whiches, and which is like this, and that is a recursive clause right there, and this is one, too, see they are pretty cool, you just put them in, with a comma, like so.” As an Oulipo-style experiment in form, the volume is certainly an impressive feat, particularly in the way Cowen manages to weave in discussions of mental illness and mania. That said, it’s obviously an acquired taste, and there are portions where the project begins to feel inevitably redundant. But those who stick it out will find that they have a new relationship not only to English syntax, but to the peculiar workings of the human mind as well.
An ambitious and striking comment on art, sanity, and human endeavor.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-66097-064-3
Page Count: 345
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A powerful and heartrending story of personal recovery.
A memoir of an author’s traumatic teenage years and its effect on her adulthood.
As a teenager in Denver, debut author Gelt outwardly appeared to have an idyllic life. Her father was a prominent, respected attorney, her mother managed the household and hosted social gatherings, and the family appear to have had few financial concerns. However, the author experienced a series of terrible events over a short period of time, which she recounts in this book in harrowing detail. She describes a teacher who betrayed her trust with an assault, her own suicide attempt, and a violent rape at gunpoint. She also describes the impact that her mother’s deteriorating mental health and father’s coldness had on the family. The book’s power lies in the author’s skill at clearly relating life-changing occurrences; for instance, she describes how her suicide attempt changed her perspective on the world: “I woke each day in a world that I had determined to never wake in again.” Gelt also expertly uses accounts of her interactions with other people to highlight what she felt was missing in her own life. At one point, she tells of how she ran away from home and was briefly being taken in by an acquaintance and his family, which made her realize how unloved and out of place she felt in her own household: “I longed for the safety of the familiar but didn’t desire home.” She later feels a similar bond with her first husband, Jack, and his family; she notes this feeling as the reason why she kept Jack’s last name after they divorced. Gelt also memorably describes how her mother’s mental illness overshadowed her own struggles: “her suffering was a jealous child.” Ultimately, the author compellingly shows how she found the strength to persevere and confront her own mental health challenges.
A powerful and heartrending story of personal recovery.Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8263-6063-2
Page Count: 280
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A lyrical meditation on growing up queer, brown, and Hindu.
Linked, illustrated vignettes, reissued in a 10th anniversary edition with a new cover and foreword by Cherie Dimaline, inspired by Shraya’s childhood spent learning to love her queer, brown, complex self.
This work of creative nonfiction begins with Shraya’s mother’s prayers for two sons. This binary, gender-based bargaining with Hindu gods is a stark contrast to the author’s fluid gender identity: although Shraya now identifies as transgender, she wrote this book before coming out and has kept the pronouns and male identifiers from the original. The book moves between India and Canada, and Shraya’s treatment of India is refreshingly nuanced and affectionate. In Canada, Shraya’s 5-year-old self is spanked for trying on lipstick without permission, but in India, his aunts eagerly wrap him in saris and bangles and praise his prettiness. Several stories capture Shraya’s changing relationship with his Hindu faith, from the disappointment of failing to convince the Hindu sage Sai Baba to take him on as a student to the ecstatic discovery of the half-man half-woman deity Ardhanaraeeshwara (“I am not invisible anymore”). Each vignette beautifully captures the tension Shraya’s younger self felt navigating the intersections of gender, race, and faith. The author’s stunningly honest voice is suffused with tenderness not only for her past self, but also for other young people currently coming to terms with multiple identities in families and societies that may not be accepting of their full selves.
A lyrical meditation on growing up queer, brown, and Hindu. (Short stories. 12-adult)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-55152-813-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
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