by Margaret Kimball ; illustrated by Margaret Kimball ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 20, 2021
A welcome debut that will leave readers eager for a successor—and soon.
Intensely candid debut memoir by illustrator and writer Kimball.
“The Secret,” the opening act of the book, pairs a charming illustrative style, marked by bold-line geometries and little handwritten pointers (“Essential sandwich ingredients,” “Weird, secret storage room”), with a startling first sentence: “My mom was thirty-one when she decided to take her own life.” That desperate act sets in motion the collapse of a seemingly ordinary family—though, of course, no family is truly ordinary. Of course, the suicide attempt, born of unsuccessfully managed bipolar disorder, clouded the lives of Kimball and her siblings, who were very young when it occurred. In adulthood, the author has tried to puzzle out events. “What I wanted,” she writes, “is to clear away the muck: to point to a date on a calendar and say this led to that; to watch a video and deconstruct the moments that led to our family’s collapse and its aftermath.” That aftermath included institutionalization, disintegration, and recrimination. As Kimball writes, her sensitivity finely attuned, it took her time to realize that exploring her mother’s psyche would force her still-living mother to “scratch at a wound that’s probably been open since childhood.” Just as sensitively, the author examines the effects of divorce on uncomprehending children and, more damagingly, the endless psychological battles surrounding custody. In the blended household in which she landed, her new family soon “began to splinter along biological lines,” with blood siblings forming alliances in what would become a long cold war. Kimball is never shy to point the finger at herself, recognizing her anger that her mother’s illness forced her to witness “the fact that she transformed from parent to stranger.” The drama grows with the emerging recognition that her mother is not the only member of the family to suffer from mental illness. It’s an extraordinarily honest look at life behind closed suburban doors—and with a sublimely redemptive conclusion.
A welcome debut that will leave readers eager for a successor—and soon.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300744-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 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 Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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