A gifted comedian turns the anxieties, obsessions, insecurities, and impossible-to-meet expectations that make up human...
From childhood to motherhood, comedian Klein’s fresh takes on the perplexities of womanhood in America.
Head writer and executive producer of the Emmy Award–winning Inside Amy Schumer, the author demonstrates storytelling verve and instincts for the absurd as she targets outlandish ideas about and expectations of women. With her polished skills, honed on the gritty comedy club circuit, The Moth radio series, and as a TV writer, Klein crafts spirited gems that run through readers’ heads like a sharp sitcom. In “How I Became a Comedian,” the author tracks her career in vignettes of ambition, insecurity, and fear of performing. She has been told that doing stand-up is a brave act, but she disagrees. Any courage she has found grew out of a “desperate, aching need,” and it took her years of therapy before she could get onstage. In the meantime, she was successful writing comedy for other people. Joan Rivers’ “force and lust and decisiveness” were inspirations for Klein to finally make the leap. Throughout the book, there is no shortage of ludicrous behavior to riff on. Having never quite outgrown her tomboy spirit, she’s confounded by the objectified images of women that persistently invade the female psyche, hers included. In “Bar Method and the Secrets of Beautiful Women,” Klein chronicles her suffering through tortuous exercise in hopes of a tighter backside. In the hilarious “Lingerie Dilemma,” the author, a cotton underwear sort of gal, prepares for a date with a new paramour by braving a French lingerie store where she tries on scanty undies under the watchful eyes of the “impossibly thin and beautiful” Frenchwomen who all look like Charlotte Gainsbourg. Ultimately, she writes, “lingerie is never really worth the agita.” In the end, though, all the aggravation that comes her way pays off in this lively, irreverent collection, leaving the impression of a strong woman with a sharp eye for the ludicrous.
A gifted comedian turns the anxieties, obsessions, insecurities, and impossible-to-meet expectations that make up human nature into laughter.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4555-3118-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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