A zippy, unabashed narrative confronting personal adversity with an equal mix of humor and sincerity.
A witty memoir detailing the misfortunes of a Hollywood comedian, actor, and writer.
Dedicated to the voices in her head who told her she could never write a book, Cummings’ debut offers what she deems is “a whole book’s worth of yummy, humiliating schadenfreude” as well as “mortifying situations that’ll make you feel way better about your own choices.” It’s an extremely self-deprecating assault on a laundry list of proclivities, insecurities, and intimate fears many readers will easily relate to. A problematic journey along the “yellow brick road of healers” results in a few opening chapters rife with ineffective therapists, pointed neuroses, and a bold admittance of chronic co-dependency, about which the author wrote in Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner’s newsletter, inspiring the book. Cummings writes about the misogyny of the stand-up comedy industry (and its audiences), her perfectionist tendencies, egg freezing, her 15-year struggle with anorexia (which included bouts of “sleep eating”), a surprise scoliosis diagnosis, and a horrifying attack by her pet pit bull. While all of these situations had disastrous potential, the author takes the sting out of each with deflective humor and straight-up honesty, humility, and a keen sense of humanity. Akin to the inner-critical narrative voice of Amy Schumer, Cummings’ observations expectedly tackle the uncomfortable and the embarrassing, including a somewhat overanalyzed encounter with drunk guys in a Las Vegas hotel hallway and an illuminating cross-cultural lesson with Middle Eastern women about wearing headscarves. Occasionally, the author brushes up against some painful truths that even she seems surprised to have publicly admitted, such as her debilitating issues with body dysmorphia and self-esteem. After years of anxiety and denial about everything from heckled stand-up gigs to asymmetrical breasts, Cummings seems content that she can now openly admit that becoming truly happy and satisfied with life is a continuous work in progress.
A zippy, unabashed narrative confronting personal adversity with an equal mix of humor and sincerity.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1260-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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