Like Tara Westover’s Educated, a compelling and horrifying account, leavened with flashes of rueful humor.
A childhood in limbo, disfigured by a mother’s trauma.
“Once upon a time, there was a boy. The boy used to have friends, like any other kid. He went to school in the mornings. He lived in a place that was not exactly like any other place. But now the boy is no one, and he lives in a town called Nowheresville.” The child who wrote that story grew up to become a successful novelist; this memoir follows three novels. After the family moved from Indiana, to Plano, Texas, and thanks to newly passed homeschooling laws, Block’s mother decided to pull him out of fourth grade and educate him at home, though little attempt at teaching or learning beyond some math lessons and a deck of trivia cards was ever made. She professed to believe him a genius who would only be held back by the curriculum of school and who was too sensitive for its social realities. Never imagining how long this might go on or “what those lost years with Mom will become”—and desperate to pull his mother out of her anger and despair following the move—young Stefan assures his principal that he wants this, too. An eerie, brutally lonely horror movie of a childhood ensues, including an episode in which Stefan and his older brother (spared the homeschool option) are forced to crawl instead of walk when they are at home because their mother believes it will improve their handwriting and a protracted attempt to bleach Stefan’s hair back to baby blond using hydrogen peroxide. When Stefan finally demands to go to public high school, he faces obstacles ranging from intractable cystic acne to a suicide epidemic that will claim 19 of his classmates. While fully communicating the absurdity and frustration of his homeschool years, the author withholds judgment of his mother, eventually learning of the life experiences that aggravated what seems to be undiagnosed mental illness. For the lack of regulation of homeschooling that continues to this day, he has harsher words.
Like Tara Westover’s Educated, a compelling and horrifying account, leavened with flashes of rueful humor.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781335000989
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.
An author’s trip to Venice takes a distinctly Borgesian turn.
In November 2020, soccer club Venizia F.C. offered Nigerian American author Madu a writing residency as part of its plan “to turn the team into a global entity of fashion, culture, and sports.” Flying to Venice for the fellowship, he felt guilty about leaving his immigrant parents, who were shocked to learn upon moving to the U.S. years earlier that their Nigerian teaching certifications were invalid, forcing his father to work as a stocking clerk at Rite Aid to support the family. Madu’s experiences in Venice are incidental to what is primarily a story about his family, especially his strained relationship with his father, who was disappointed with many of his son’s choices. Unfortunately, the author’s seeming disinterest in Venice renders much of the narrative colorless. He says the trip across the Ponte della Libertà bridge was “magical,” but nothing he describes—the “endless water on both sides,” the nearby seagulls—is particularly remarkable. Little in the text conveys a sense of place or the unique character of his surroundings. Madu is at his best when he focuses on family dynamics and his observations that, in the largely deserted city, “I was one of the few Black people around.” He cites Borges, giving special note to the author’s “The House of Asterion,” in which the minotaur “explains his situation as a creature and as a creature within the labyrinth” of multiple mirrors. This notion leads to the Borgesian turn in the book’s second half, when, in an extended sequence, Madu imagines himself transformed into a minotaur, with “the head of a bull” and his body “larger, thicker, powerful but also cumbersome.” It’s an engaging passage, although stylistically out of keeping with much of what has come before.
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781953368669
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Of most interest to dyed-in-the-wool lovers or haters.
“Not a Cinderella story.”
Baldwin’s loosely written memoir is about motherhood and pregnancy loss, marriage to a celebrity, being the target of gossip and criticism, the experiences of neurodivergency and bilingualism, and more. “When Alec and I met, I was twenty-seven and he was fifty-three,” she writes. “Now, it’s nearly a decade and a half later….People always ask me: What is life actually like with seven kids (and an Alec)? It’s amazing and chaotic.” This book comes on the heels of the first season of the family’s reality show, The Baldwins, seemingly designed to answer the same burning question. While the author seems like a nice, well-meaning person, one comes away from this memoir hoping the television version, with the story sculpted by professionals, is the more entertaining response. Given the fact that there has been controversy about Baldwin’s background, perhaps she should have written a straightforward autobiography. But she has not, and the reader might need to do some research to understand the nature of some of the attacks she writes about. The veracity of her Spanish identity has come under fire, as her birth name is Hilary, she was born in Boston, and is not of Latine descent—but you won’t learn those facts from this book. The author’s relative youth, her choice to have her sixth child via surrogate, and Alec Baldwin’s involvement in the death of a colleague on a film set have all been media fodder. She discusses several specific nemeses without naming them, which is not very interesting. “I grapple with the question: Why am I here in the public space? Why am I ‘relevant’? Am I here because an actor fell in love with me? Am I here because I’m a yoga teacher and have things to say about mental and physical health? Am I here because I had a lot of kids?” It’s not clear that she knows, and neither will you.
Of most interest to dyed-in-the-wool lovers or haters.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781668009987
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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