A whiny, snarky memoir of “the muddy field of unhappiness and constant discomfort.”
A Canadian writer tells the story of how she grew into a malcontented adult.
Korson grew up in 1970s suburban Montreal feeling inadequate. While her family was only middle-class, her next-door neighbors could afford a live-in maid and all the dolls their daughter could ever want. Korson’s perpetually crabby mother refused to buy her those dolls, and her makeup-wearing businessman father went to work sporting a look “somewhere between European porn director and Jewish buckaroo.” Korson started kindergarten at a French-speaking school where she struck up an alliance with an equally unhappy 6-year-old “dead ringer…for Walter Matthau.” Ever on the lookout for fellow misfits, she befriended a troublemaking girl at summer camp and nearly got kicked out for bad behavior. In high school, theater provided her a temporary respite from the “bullshit” of life. Korson spent the rest of the time mooning over an on-again, off-again relationship that allowed her to indulge in her penchant for “sadness and negativity.” After graduating from college, she found a job at a talent agency, where she was reminded of her “stupidity, incompetence and general dislikability.” The author also eventually met the “quasi-Deadhead sporto part-time vegetarian/alcoholic” who would become her husband after years of makeups and breakups. During the years she worried about making “crazy” babies and how she would die, she finally reached middle age. It was then that Korson learned she suffered from chronic low-level depression. Though only the “gluten intolerance of mental disorders,” her diagnosis helped her realize why she could never find joy in her life and why she was like a disease “to be managed” rather than a person in need of serious attitude adjustment. Though rich in descriptive detail, Korson's attempts at humor implode under the weight of her unrelenting negativity.
A whiny, snarky memoir of “the muddy field of unhappiness and constant discomfort.”Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4026-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Her biographer, James Westcott, once said: “every time she tells a story, it gets better,” and one can’t help but wait in...
Legendary performance artist Abramovic unveils her story in this highly anticipated memoir.
When she was growing up, the author lived in an environment of privilege in Yugoslavia, which was on the verge of ruin. Her parents, two fervent communist partisans and loyal officers during Josip Broz Tito’s rule, were not the warmest people. Abramovic was put under the care of several people, only to be taken in by her grandmother. “I felt displaced and I probably thought that if I walked, it meant I would have to go away again somewhere,” she writes. Ultimately, she carried this feeling of displacement throughout most, if not all, of her career. Many remember The Artist Is Present, her 2010 performance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York during which she sat in front of museumgoers for 736 hours, but her work started long before then. As a woman who almost single-handedly launched female performance art, the author has spent the better part of her life studying the different ways in which the body functions in time and space. She pushed herself to explore her body’s limits and her mind’s boundaries (“I [have] put myself in so much pain that I no longer [feel] any pain”). For example, she stood in front of a bow and arrow aimed at her heart with her romantic and performance partner of 12 years, Ulay. She was also one of the first people to walk along the Great Wall of China, a project she conceived when secluded in aboriginal Australia. While the author’s writing could use some polishing, the voice that seeps through the text is hypnotizing, and readers will have a hard time putting the book down and will seek out further information about her work.
Her biographer, James Westcott, once said: “every time she tells a story, it gets better,” and one can’t help but wait in anticipation of what she is concocting for her next tour de force.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90504-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
An authentic and fresh extension of the author’s successful Web series.
Writer, producer and director Rae, famous for her popular Web series, "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl," channels her humor and attention to detail into this eponymous collection of personal essays about all the embarrassing moments that have made her who she is.
Sharp and able to laugh at herself, the author writes as if she's unabashedly telling friends a stream of cringeworthy stories about her life. Having grown up with the understanding that laughing at and talking about people was a form of entertainment and bonding, Rae continues the tradition by inviting readers into her inner circle and making her own foibles her primary focus. Almost 30, she opens up about nearly everything in her life, from her lifelong fear of being watched while eating in public to acutely awkward experiences with Internet dating and cybersex. The theme that race plays in this book is integral, although Rae's approach, as with all of her subjects, is decidedly humorous and lighthearted; she veers, always, toward a personal tone as opposed to one that's political or polemical. Her unwavering candidness, the sheer energy of her voice and the fact that she clearly finds herself to be terrific material make her a charismatic, if occasionally exasperating, narrator worth rooting for. Having been in a committed relationship for seven years, Rae unpacks how her Senegalese parents’ union contributed to her attitude (indifference) toward marriage. Some readers will find her proclamations and direct confessions offensive and be turned off; others may be offended but laugh out loud anyway. In Rae, her audience has landed on a singular voice with the verve and vivacity of uncorked champagne.
An authentic and fresh extension of the author’s successful Web series.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1476749051
Page Count: 210
Publisher: 37 Ink/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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