A potent, if overlong, account of the damaging effects of abuse on mental health.
A millennial woman chronicles the pain of growing up in an unstable and abusive family in this memoir about mental illness and survival.
McConnell was 8 years old when she made the first entry in her new diary, and the journal quickly became a secret friend and safe place to express the confusion and fear of a young girl growing up in a perilous world. “I keep a lot of secrets,” she confesses as she describes the loneliness of waiting in a car while her mother and stepfather drank in a bar, the terror of being chased by strange men at a playground, and the disturbing blackouts during which she attacked school bullies with rage and violence. As the author came of age, her feeling of being “an invisible nothing” increased as she faced the even more serious dangers of her own alcohol and drug abuse and a gang-rape. In the context of her painful life, cherished milestones, such as a first kiss and first date, became invasive assaults. Her love of music and her struggle to get an education provided lifelines of hope in an otherwise desperate existence. In an author’s note at the end of this lengthy narrative, McConnell acknowledges that she has “taken artistic liberty” in reconstructing the events of her own life. In spite of this, the immediacy of the storytelling style and the sheer volume of convincing details attest to the truth behind this powerful memoir. The author creates this sense of reliability by employing the fearlessly self-revealing tone of a personal diary and by anchoring her personal drama in relatable moments of popular culture and historical events, from watching Little House on the Prairie and pretending Pa Ingles was her own father to celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall just before going to jail for drunken driving. The length and unremitting bleakness of the book are daunting, and its important message might be more accessible if it were more compact. Still, McConnell’s childhood trauma is depicted with poignant honesty, and those who stick with the work will cheer her survival.
A potent, if overlong, account of the damaging effects of abuse on mental health.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63988-097-3
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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
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