A brave exercise in self-revelation but a decidedly sour, depressing reading experience.
A portrait of the artist as a glum man.
Yoo, the author of two YA novels (Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One Before, 2008, etc.), presents a painfully honest and strangely unlikable memoir recounting his conflicted feelings about being Asian American—though “conflicted” may be the wrong word, as the emotional tenor here leans precipitously toward flat-out self-hatred. The title refers to the author’s strategy of deliberate failure calculated to counter assumptions based on his membership in a “model minority” and the attendant expectations of academic and professional success. This approach led to disastrous consequences in all aspects of his life, including a chronic impotence problem, which is described in copious detail. Yoo paints himself as a dedicated dilettante, haplessly affecting hip-hop cultural signifiers as a teenager, getting through school without distinguishing himself in any way and embracing his status as an anonymous office drone in a successful bid to matter to no one and contribute nothing of significance to the world. There is plenty of rich material here, but Yoo is not a particularly flavorful prose stylist, and his reflexive self-deprecating humor is generically unamusing and further paints him as an unpleasant vortex of insecurity and muffled rage. The author experiences an ironic epiphany late in the narrative when he recognizes that his fiction is hamstrung by unsympathetic characters that exude these traits…the irony being that they also dominate this exploration of his rather pathetic personal history and are not redeemed by any special insight or transformative literary magic.
A brave exercise in self-revelation but a decidedly sour, depressing reading experience.Pub Date: June 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-446-57345-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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