A middling but still provocative rebuttal of the concept of the tiger mother.
A journalistic study of America’s overcommitted, overworked youth.
Today, writes journalist Wallace, “kids are running a course marked out for them, without enough rest or a chance to decide if it’s even a race they want to run.” In a series of anecdotal accounts, the author portrays teenagers working relentlessly on their studies and college-placement exams during the week but then knocking themselves out with booze and drugs on the weekend, and younger children suffering torments of anguish at not being stars on the field or in class. These are, Wallace adds, the children of parents who “have the privilege to choose where they live and where their children go to school.” Perhaps surprisingly, she notes, the statistics indicate that such children are far more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol than are youth in positions of poverty, and far more susceptible to clinical depression. Wallace decries the “achievement culture” that produces such results, arguing that it comes from parents’ expectations that, because children are seen as investments, they should receive a high rate of return, commodifying their flesh and blood. Wallace strays into pop psych here and there, as when she attributes some parental anxiety to the same sort of scarcity thinking that led our hunter-gatherer ancestors to gorge on food whenever it was available, knowing that famine would follow. Given the small number of admissions at top schools—which, ranked by the number of applications declined, thereby become still more elite—those parents are strongly motivated to demand perfection and more from their offspring. Instead, Wallace counsels in a meandering argument that probably won’t do much to dismantle the achievement machine, parents need to focus on building self-esteem, service to others, and “the power of mattering.”
A middling but still provocative rebuttal of the concept of the tiger mother.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2023
ISBN: 9780593191866
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2023
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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