Sordid, compulsively readable entries that lay bare a troubled soul painstakingly on the mend.
Depression, anxiety, panic disorder, and addiction all resonate in this outspoken collection of essays.
Broder’s (Scarecrone, 2014, etc.) collection of 18 provocative essays began in 2012 as a formerly anonymous Twitter account loaded with dark humor and downward mood swings. Since its unmasking, the author now fully embraces the peaks and valleys of her emotional landscape as she attempts to “fill my many insatiable internal holes with external stuff.” Following a cursory glance at her upbringing, where “the religion of the household quickly became food,” Broder admits to chronically chewing her nails and ingesting other bodily products to “find comfort...even in the darkest, most disgusting places.” This graphic depiction of her youthful melancholy suitably sets the tone for the remainder of the essays, mostly overcast with angst yet punctuated with self-deprecating humor. The author lucidly describes her post-collegiate years living in Northern California, “melting down” in a whirlwind of alcohol, drugs, sexual experimentation, and employment in “a Tantric sex nonprofit.” Some sections read like slam poetry, as when Broder ruminates about love, graphic sexting with an online flame, or the things that bring her shame. The answers to an Internet addiction quiz compellingly illuminate her innermost fears of death and rejection. The author digs even deeper as she unveils an odd affinity for nicotine gum, Botox, open marriage, and a fetish for vomit, something she believes taps into the “dark, untouched corners within all of us.” While Effexor played an integral part, readers will also realize that Broder’s tweets were just as instrumental in her sobriety. In these vividly rendered and outspokenly delivered essays, the author admits to being in better shape now than before, and “sending what I was feeling out into the universe” has become the ultimate wellness elixir.
Sordid, compulsively readable entries that lay bare a troubled soul painstakingly on the mend.Pub Date: March 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4555-6272-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
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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