WHERE'S MY PARTICIPATION TROPHY?

by Paul S. Rothenberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 27, 2026

Rothenberg’s memoir chronicles the life of a late-nineties kid.

In his nonfiction debut, the author uses an episodic approach to tell his story. Born in Brooklyn, he grew up in the Long Island town of West Babylon in the late 1980s and ’90s with an older father ailing from Parkinson’s, an Italian Catholic mother, and one sibling, his older sister, Leah. Characterizing himself as an ordinary guy, he dramatizes moments from his life ranging from the very ordinary (dealing with allergies, going to college, joining a fraternity) to the more unusual, as when he and his friends were able to obtain some “magic mushrooms” (“No small feat in suburban Long Island for a bunch of honors students,” he quips). Some of the chapters are flights of fancy, as when Rothenberg writes up an interview between fictional “psychiatrist, best-selling author, and humanitarian” Dr. Julien Montaine and an author stand-in named “Paulo”; others are firmly grounded in the historic events that dot his narrative, like the Covid-19 pandemic (“the shelves throughout the apartment are lined with non-perishable foods”). Whether describing attending a poker tournament in Atlantic City or living alone for the first time in Virginia in 2012, the author is comfortable using saucy language from time to time, and he pulls no punches when recounting instances of drunken revelry. In a series of relatively short and fast-paced chapters, he recalls various milestones, including job-hunting experiences and meeting and marrying a woman named Arina.

The episodic approach Rothenberg adopts throughout does a good deal to prevent the book from feeling merely like a barrage of autobiographical trivia. Most of the chapters read as self-contained material, acting as free-standing meditations on some moment or memory from the past—signposts like the author’s first car, his first solo apartment, baseball games (“I come from a long line of insufferable Yankees fans,” he confesses, which will confuse some readers who believe there is no other kind of Yankees fan), or the terrorist attacks of 9/11 (“I was in English class when the first plane hit”). The common element connecting these semi-compartmentalized chapters is Rothenberg’s caustic, often funny self-deprecation. He’s never above taking jabs at himself, either as an awkward, skinny kid or as an adult unsure of himself in certain social settings. There’s no pomposity in his tone, and he does an effective job of switching up the narrative’s tenor and highlighting his own emotional vulnerabilities—he likens receiving a tough response from a friend, for instance, to taking a crowbar to his insecurity: “I was swirling, boiling, livid and desolate all at once.” Rothenberg displays skill at working in atmospheric details that pin down the book to its time period, referencing MySpace and Geocities and a steady parade of songs on the radio. Readers happily turning pages to the end of this book will be engaged by a sharp portrait of a man of his times.

A heartfelt, wry, and amusing memoir of growing up in the ’90s and confronting the adult world.

Pub Date: March 27, 2026

ISBN: 9798317825638

Page Count: 268

Publisher: BookBaby

Review Posted Online: May 5, 2026

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL NONFICTION