A rambling, tedious narrative that may appeal to fans of James Frey–style, tough-guy confessionals.
A fevered memoir detailing how a surly bohemian, lost to alcoholism, was saved by marathon running.
Shubaly, a musician and raconteur who’s published several bestselling Kindle Singles through Amazon (The Long Run, 2014, etc.), is straightforward about the self-regard he drowned in booze and bad behavior. “For someone who had moved to NYC with the bald intention of getting famous,” he writes, “my anonymity remained so pristinely intact one would think I’d been fighting to preserve it.” The author attributes his decadent lost years to a high-drama childhood, including an estranged father and chaotic family, a sudden cross-country move, and general lower-middle-class angst. This disaster-prone adolescence culminated in admission to Simon’s Rock, the “college for high schoolers,” in time to witness one of the first school shootings of the 1990s. By then, he’d disappeared into punk rock and binge drinking: “Winter came and, with it, darkness….A shot of liquor in the bottom of a chipped glass glowed like it was radioactive: if I take this shot, I will puke tonight. I drank them all.” In this tale of soused desperation, Shubaly dismisses as gullible tools everyone beyond his beleaguered siblings, lovers, and band mates, and he disregards the concept of editorial selectivity: passages focused on mooning over his college girlfriend or his gradual reconciliation with his father go on endlessly—yet he curtly dismisses the citywide trauma of 9/11. The arc of redemption, in which Shubaly forgoes alcohol for the rigors of “ultrarunning,” is similarly repetitious, albeit loaded with the author’s sense of personal triumph. “This was an accomplishment not even I could diminish,” he writes. “There was no denying it. I was one of those top-tier wackjobs.” Though Shubaly produces some humorous and trenchant observations about urban hipster culture, the craft and focus cannot match the grating level of self-absorption.
A rambling, tedious narrative that may appeal to fans of James Frey–style, tough-guy confessionals.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61039-558-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Bighearted, sobering, and humane.
A bookseller in Wigtown, Scotland, recounts a year in his life as a small-town dealer of secondhand books.
“The pleasure derived from handling books that have introduced something of cultural or scientific significance to the world is undeniably the greatest luxury that this business affords,” writes Bythell. In a diary that records his wry observations from behind the counter of his store, the author entertains readers with eccentric character portraits and stories of his life in the book trade. The colorful cast of characters includes bookshop regulars like Eric, the local orange-robed Buddhist; Captain, Bythell’s “accursed cat”; “Sandy the tattooed pagan”; and “Mole-Man,” a patron with a penchant for in-store “literary excavations.” Bythell’s employees are equally quirky. Nicky, the author’s one paid worker, is an opinionated Jehovah’s Witness who “consistently ignores my instructions” and criticizes her boss as “an impediment to the success of the business.” His volunteer employee, an Italian college student named Emanuela (whom the author nicknamed Granny due to her endless complaints about bodily aches), came to Wigtown to move beyond the world of study and “expand [her] knowledge.” Woven into stories about haggling with clients over prices or dealing with daily rounds of vague online customer requests—e.g., a query about a book from “around about 1951. Part of the story line is about a cart of apples being upset, that’s all I know”)—are more personal dramas, like the end of his marriage and the difficult realities of owning a store when “50 per cent [sic] of retail purchases are made online.” For Bythell, managing technical glitches, contending with low profit margins on Amazon, and worrying about the future of his business are all part of a day’s work. Irascibly droll and sometimes elegiac, this is an engaging account of bookstore life from the vanishing front lines of the brick-and-mortar retail industry.
Bighearted, sobering, and humane.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-56792-664-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
James Baldwin has come a long way since the days of Notes of a Native Son, when, in 1955, he wrote: "I love America more than any other country in the world; and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." Such bittersweet affairs are bound to turn sour. The first curdling came with The Fire Next Time, a moving memoir, yet shot through with rage and prophetic denunciations. It made Baldwin famous, indeed a celebrity, but it did little, in retrospect, to further his artistic reputation. Increasingly, it seems, he found it impossible to reconcile his private and public roles, his creative integrity and his position as spokesman for his race. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, for example, his last novel, proved to be little more than a propagandistic potboiler. Nor, alas, are things very much better in No Name In the Street, a brief, rather touchy and self-regarding survey of the awful events of the '60's — the deaths of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the difficulties of the Black Panther Party, the abrasive and confused relationships between liberals and militants. True, Baldwin's old verve and Biblical raciness are once more heard in his voice; true, there are poignant moments and some surprisingly intimate details. But this chronicle of his "painful route back to engagement" never really comes to grips with history or the self. The revelatory impulse is present only in bits and pieces. Mostly one is confronted with psychological and ideological disingenuousness — and vanity as well.
Pub Date: May 26, 1972
ISBN: 0307275922
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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