A magnetic collection of real stories that sheds a new light on life in the Midwest.
An aspiring creative struggles with his identity.
In his second memoir, Poole (Where’s My Wand?: One Boy’s Magical Triumph over Alienation and Shag Carpeting, 2010) describes the hardships he faced as a Christian teenager living in suburban St. Louis. Both self-conscious and feeling like an outsider, the author did not fit into the standard idea of a straight male high school experience. A talented trumpet player, Poole begins his memoir by recounting his disastrous first sexual encounter with a girl, a memorably recounted event that occurred at an illicit, alcohol-drenched party he had to bribe his way into. In this Donna Summer–infused world, the author and his adolescent cohorts were being tested by the changing sociocultural environment. Confident that he was destined to become a star, Poole made it through high school and college with a few hiccups and countless girlfriends. But nothing really seemed to stick—until he met Kurt, a gay man with whom he formed a meaningful connection. Kurt was convinced Poole was gay and openly shared his opinions as often as possible. The author traces his journey through his confusing adolescence and professional forays in travel and advertising agencies, maps out the gay scene in 1980s St. Louis, and provides crucial insight on the difficulties of coming out within an intolerant societal infrastructure as well as a religious family. Refreshingly, this is not a traditional coming-out story. While many such memoirs capitalize on the author’s sexuality, Poole instead focuses on the creation of his entire identity. Sex is merely a component, not a defining factor. Punctuated with highly effective humor, this book could easily serve as a resource for any closeted individuals looking to read another success story.
A magnetic collection of real stories that sheds a new light on life in the Midwest.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-948122-04-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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