Unstrap your backpack of guilt and sit down for a laugh.
The nonbeliever's guide to eternal torment.
Fans of the formally innovative comic essayist Moore learned of his falling-out with the faith of his childhood via his 1997 spiritual memoir The Accidental Buddhist. Now, however, it turns out he's still working on freeing himself from the far-reaching aftereffects of Catholic school, inviting readers to join him in sloughing off the "massive emotional backpacks of needless guilt that have been strapped onto our tender psyches by organized religion and the pretzel-logic of medieval theology." In chapters linked to the cantos of Dante’s Inferno, the author debunks the poem's "pulsing, perilous mixtape of Greek, Roman, and Christian myths and images.” He also attacks the misinformation distributed by his first religion teacher, Sister Mary Mark (he's still unclear on how his donated milk money saved pagan babies); the writings of St. Augustine, “a great and devout man, a spiritual genius, and honestly, a bit of a wackadoodle”; The New Saint Joseph Baltimore Catechism, “a pint-sized paperback offering a significant dumbing down of key biblical teachings, written expressly for impressionable young ears”; and an even more bizarre book titled The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven (2010), which was “pulled from the shelves in 2015” due to a lawsuit questioning its veracity. To research Inferno-stoking vices such as gluttony, hoarding, and squandering, Moore competed in a chicken-wing eating contest in Kentucky and attended the annual “World's Longest Yard Sale,” which stretches nearly 700 miles from southern Michigan to Alabama. The author also offers unexpectedly moving passages on the sad family history that inspired his mother to frequently state, "My hell is right here on Earth." Luckily, Moore found his own saving grace early on. "Each time that ugly snake of despair circled around and tried to take another bite out of me,” he writes, “I was kept alive by humor and by incredulity."
Unstrap your backpack of guilt and sit down for a laugh.Pub Date: March 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4962-2460-6
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
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
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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