An ultimately uplifting memoir in which the author learns “to love my authentic self, not the image I had created.”
A blogger and essayist’s account of how he came out after discovering that hackers had used a personal photo on dating websites to lure unsuspecting women into relationships.
Dameron was in his mid-40s when he learned that cyberthieves had used a stolen selfie for a catfishing scheme that succeeded in duping women all over the world looking for love. The incident left him feeling angry and violated but also profoundly disturbed: Now the online poster child of “deceptive online dating,” it seemed the universe was also calling him into account for the lie that had become his adult life. A father of two who had married his college sweetheart, Dameron had been raised Catholic by a homophobic mother. His adolescence had been an ongoing struggle to keep his gay identity private and live like a “normal” man. No longer willing to remain in the closet but unsure of how to escape it, he sought out the company of males at the local gym and secretly experimented with steroids to build up his body. He also developed a close friendship with Enzo, a straight man at his company, that quickly developed into one-sided attraction. Jealous of her husband’s “bromance,” Dameron’s wife accidentally found his cache of steroids. After couples counseling failed to shore up their marriage, they separated, and the author began working with a therapist to help him come to terms with “the other [gay] Bill.” Seeking a foothold in the gay community, he moved in with two lesbians and began searching for a partner. In the meantime, his wife and daughters struggled to cope with the personal and social fallout that Dameron’s revelation brought into their lives. Eventually, the author crossed paths with another gay “breeder and…Daddy” who not only helped Dameron face his demons, but also became his husband. Candid and compassionate, the book celebrates truth and honors the redemptive power of forgiveness and love.
An ultimately uplifting memoir in which the author learns “to love my authentic self, not the image I had created.”Pub Date: July 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4474-5
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Little A
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
The acclaimed author of My Own Country (1996) turns his gaze inward to a pair of crises that hit even closer to home than the AIDS epidemic of which he wrote previously. Verghese took a teaching position at Texas Tech’s medical school, and it’s his arrival in the unfamiliar city of El Paso that triggers the events of his second book (parts of which appeared in the New Yorker). His marriage, already on the rocks in My Own Country, has collapsed utterly and the couple agree to a separation. In a new job in a new city, he finds himself more alone than he has ever been. But he becomes acquainted with a charming fourth-year student on his rotation, David, a former professional tennis player from Australia. Verghese, an ardent amateur himself, begins to play regularly with David and the two become close friends, indeed deeply dependent on each other. Gradually, the younger man begins to confide in his teacher and friend. David has a secret, known to most of the other students and staff at the teaching hospital but not to the recently arrived Verghese; he is a recovering drug addict whose presence at Tech is only possible if he maintains a rigorous schedule of AA meetings and urine tests. When David relapses and his life begins to spiral out of control, Verghese finds himself drawn into the young man’s troubles. As in his previous book, Verghese distinguishes himself by virtue not only of tremendous writing skill—he has a talented diagnostician’s observant eye and a gift for description—but also by his great humanity and humility. Verghese manages to recount the story of the failure of his marriage without recriminations and with a remarkable evenhandedness. Likewise, he tells David’s story honestly and movingly. Although it runs down a little in the last 50 pages or so, this is a compulsively readable and painful book, a work of compassion and intelligence.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-017405-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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