A frank, perceptive, and insightful remembrance.
A mother describes raising a child with special needs in this debut memoir.
On April 11, 1982, on Easter Sunday in Buffalo, New York, Rubin gave birth to her daughter, Jess, while suffering from chicken pox herself. She was forced to isolate from her newborn child until her illness had passed. At first, pediatricians assured Rubin and her husband, Mitch, that their daughter was developing normally, but the author notes that Jess had “unusual facial features and other anomalies.” Jess was later found to have multiple developmental disabilities resulting from a chromosomal disorder, although Rubin struggled for years to receive an accurate diagnosis. The author describes her initial drive to understand and “fix” Jess’ condition; she records key moments, such as her daughter’s bat mitzvah and her entry into the special education process. Rubin also relates her own career path, which led to her becoming the director of the Early Childhood Direction Center at Buffalo Children’s Hospital in 1998. The memoir concludes with Rubin and her husband visiting Jess, now in her 30s, in her group-home community during the Covid-19 pandemic and the heartache they felt when they had to distance from their daughter. Rubin is a forthright author who addresses topics that other parents of children with multiple disabilities will find stimulating, as when she explores the significance of getting Jess’ diagnosis: “The revelation did not change therapies or even medical care, but it gave a name and identity to the various symptoms and beauty that describe Jessica.” The author’s approach is also courageously exploratory, as when she investigates how Jess’ siblings were shaped by growing up with her. Throughout, Rubin shares a wide range of material, including family photographs and even the invitation to Jess’ bat mitzvah. Some readers may feel that some of this is unnecessary and makes for an overly cluttered memoir, but others will think it makes Jess’ story feel all the more personal. Overall, Rubin writes with clarity and thoughtful introspection, making for a truly enlightening read.
A frank, perceptive, and insightful remembrance.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-66246-052-4
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fun if overly flamboyant appreciation of a TV giant.
A biography of American late-night television’s biggest star.
Zehme, author of biographies of Frank Sinatra and Hugh Hefner, had a lifelong love of Tonight Show host Johnny Carson. In 1973, at age 15, Zehme was “already a full-blown Carson fanboy.” As a reporter for Rolling Stone, he tried unsuccessfully to secure an interview to coincide with Carson’s 1992 retirement after a 30-year run. In 2002, Zehme, now with Esquire, “gets extended face time” with the star for a piece to mark 10 years since Carson’s departure. Shortly after Carson’s death in 2005, Zehme began work on a biography. The task was overwhelming—“there was always more to be gleaned”—even before Zehme’s 2013 diagnosis of stage 4 colorectal cancer. He died in 2023, having finished only the first three-quarters of this biography. Thomas, a longtime Chicago arts reporter, has completed the book in time for Carson’s 2025 centenary. The result is an admiring work that nonetheless acknowledges the lows as well as the highs of Carson’s life—he had three divorces—and career, from his ill-fated 1955 variety program The Johnny Carson Show, to his 1957-62 stint as host of the ABC game show Who Do You Trust?, to his taking over The Tonight Show from Jack Paar in 1962. It’s easy to tell where Zehme left off and Thomas took over. The tone changes dramatically, from Zehme’s florid style to Thomas’s drier approach. Those florid passages, which make up most of the book, are baroque in the extreme, with lines like, “And so, like sun and moon and oxygen and ionosphere, Johnny Carson was always there, reliable and steadfast.” Despite the purple prose, the result is an entertaining look at not only a unique figure in 20th-century popular culture but also a bygone era in American television.
A fun if overly flamboyant appreciation of a TV giant.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781451645279
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
An unflinching self-portrait.
The tumultuous life of a bisexual, autistic comic.
In her debut memoir, Scottish comedian Brady recounts the emotional turmoil of living with undiagnosed autism. “The public perception of autistics is so heavily based on the stereotype of men who love trains or science,” she writes, “that many women miss out on diagnosis and are thought of as studious instead.” She was nothing if not studious, obsessively focused on foreign languages, but she found it difficult to converse in her own language. From novels, she tried to gain “knowledge about people, about how they spoke to each other, learning turns of phrase and metaphor” that others found so familiar. Often frustrated and overwhelmed by sensory overload, she erupted in violent meltdowns. Her parents, dealing with behavior they didn’t understand—including self-cutting—sent her to “a high-security mental hospital” as a day patient. Even there, a diagnosis eluded her; she was not accurately diagnosed until she was 34. Although intimate friendships were difficult, she depicts her uninhibited sexuality and sometimes raucous affairs with both men and women. “I grew up confident about my queerness,” she writes, partly because of “autism’s lack of regard for social norms.” While at the University of Edinburgh, she supported herself as a stripper. “I liked that in a strip club men’s contempt of you was out in the open,” she admits. “In the outside world, misogyny was always hovering in your peripheral vision.” When she worked as a reporter for the university newspaper, she was assigned to try a stint as a stand-up comic and write about it; she found it was work she loved. After “about a thousand gigs in grim little pubs across England,” she landed an agent and embarked on a successful career. Although Brady hopes her memoir will “make things feel better for the next autistic or misfit girl,” her anger is as evident as her compassion.
An unflinching self-portrait.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780593582503
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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