This powerful work mixes an AIDS account with a history of a spouse’s scandalous behavior.
In this memoir, a writer chronicles his experiences during the AIDS crisis and his husband’s double life, revealing multiple affairs.
Edwards-Stout sets the tone of this book by sharing the story of reading his “civil-union” husband’s email in 2001 only to discover that he was planning to leave him for someone else. Readers will expect the sordid tale of this philandering husband, whom the author refers to as “Eyes,” to follow this opening scene. But the audience must wait for further revelations about Eyes. Instead, the author spends the first half of the memoir recounting growing up in Southern California as a gay man in the 1970s and trying to break into acting in Hollywood after dabbling in theater at UCLA. Telling tales of hobnobbing with stars from that period like Loni Anderson, Jennifer Beals, and Darren McGavin, Edwards-Stout also recounts meeting actors like Mariska Hargitay and Jack Black before they became famous. The author later turned into an activist, working for AIDS Project Los Angeles during the height of the health disaster. The chapters about caring for his lover Shane as he died from the disease in 1995 are the most poignant parts of the work. Edwards-Stout peppers his story with various “Life Lessons” he has picked up throughout his journey that also deftly display his sense of humor. For example: “Never underestimate the impact that walking into a gym shower, only to witness a former boss shaving his balls, can have.” The second part of the engrossing memoir finally divulges Eyes’ outrageous indiscretions: multiple affairs that had him switching out his wedding ring as well as fabricating chemotherapy treatments. The author actually offers two illuminating books here: the moving story of being a gay man in Los Angeles during the AIDS catastrophe and the shocking litany of betrayals by his husband, the father of their adopted son.
This powerful work mixes an AIDS account with a history of a spouse’s scandalous behavior.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9839837-5-0
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Circumspect Press
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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