by Hunter Biden ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 6, 2021
Sometimes moving, sometimes funny, often horrifying, thoroughly heartfelt, and believable.
A memoir of addiction, family, and loss from the president’s son.
For much of his life, fate seemed to be trying to take Biden down, and he did his share to help it along. On the not-his-fault side were the tragic car accident when he was 2, which critically injured him and his older brother, Beau, and took the lives of their mother and sister; Beau's heartbreaking death at 46; and the nightmare of Donald Trump's relentless campaign to weaponize Hunter against his father. The author’s own major contribution to his troubles arose from his addiction to crack. His engrossing account of his downward spiral brings to mind Bill Clegg's Portrait of the Addict as a Young Man (2010), as Biden chronicles his battles with the “terrorizing band of skeletal night riders—the Four Horsemen of the Crackocalypse.” Sparing no detail, he ranges from the sardonic—while recounting his efforts to find crumbs of crack in the carpet, he writes, "I've smoked more cheddar popcorn than anyone on earth"—to the ruefully insightful: "Once you decide you're the bad guy everyone thinks you are, it's hard to find the good guy you once were." Looming over the narrative is the ultimate good guy, Beau, who didn't drink or take drugs and appears entirely pure in heart and mind. Though Hunter's addiction began long before Beau's death, the loss of his brother broke him. One of the hardest things to read about is the attempt by Hunter and Beau's widow, Hallie, to deal with their loss by becoming a couple. Difficult to read for different reasons is the chapter on Hunter’s Ukrainian business connections, which form the basis of Trump’s attacks and the "Where's Hunter" movement. The granular details shared here seem to bear out the author’s assessment that the whole episode is “most remarkable for its epic banality." When he was just about to cash in his chips for good, fate had one more surprise for Hunter, this one a stroke of Cupid’s magic.
Sometimes moving, sometimes funny, often horrifying, thoroughly heartfelt, and believable.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982151-11-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
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by Jennette McCurdy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 9, 2022
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
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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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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Best Books Of 2015
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National Book Award Winner
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
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
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ; illustrated by Jackie Aher
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