A ribald memoir of self-discovery that is not for the squeamish.
Journalist and comedian Stadtmiller, best known for describing her dating life in detail for the readers of the New York Post, covers the decade of her 30s in an uninhibited account of bad behavior.
In 2005, the author, now a columnist for the Daily Beast, turned 30, got divorced after a marriage of five years, and started a new job at the Post. She wrote features and covered celebrities, and then she found her niche writing a dating column. When she wasn't writing, she was drinking to the point of frequent blackouts, going through “binge-and-starve cycles,” and having a series of one-night stands with people she often didn’t recognize in the morning. As she writes, her life had become “a cocktail of excess.” With her therapists, Stadtmiller delved into her past and found some plausible explanations for her behavior: Her parents, she writes, both had psychological problems, she was sexually assaulted at a party when she was a teenager, and, later, her parents failed to show sufficient interest in her career. Throughout, the author name-drops with enthusiasm. At one point, for example, she claims that she was simultaneously dating Aaron Sorkin, Keith Olbermann, and Lloyd Grove. Eventually, the memoir takes the shape of a redemption narrative. Stadtmiller hit bottom several times, joined AA and other recovery programs, realized she couldn’t count on a guy to make her life worth living, met “one of the kindest, most thoughtful guys I've dated,” and got married again. Presumably, she is currently living happily-ever-after. More intriguing than the contours of this familiar story are the darkly humorous details of working for the Post and the other publications where she has worked or freelanced, including xoJane, TimeOut, Maxim, and Penthouse.
A ribald memoir of self-discovery that is not for the squeamish.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7403-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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