A sincere, simple life-instruction booklet for young adults.
This debut advice guide provides recommendations for 17-year-olds on handling the “life-defining” college years.
“Further education, inside and outside of college, is a foundation on which to build the rest of your life,” writes Walsh, who urges his target reader to use the earliest years of adulthood to become “a rounded person with good judgment, many skills and a strong moral fibre.” Walsh’s starter suggestion is to create a two-column chart, highlighting what one is “Good At” and “Poor At,” and then to “get to work” on strengthening oneself in both areas. He emphasizes that everyone has failings, however, and that one should seek help if dealing with anxiety or despair. Walsh then offers an “Upskilling” chapter, advice on finances (be careful with credit cards), living away from home (learn how to cook), and socializing. His third chapter focuses on study habits, urging readers to learn how to touch-type and to limit distractions when they’re hitting the books. In a final “Lifestyle” chapter, Walsh discusses sexuality, noting that “you need to build robust management skills for this powerful drive within you,” such as by thinking “spiritually.” He concludes by quoting a poem by Baptist pastor Clyde Box. Walsh, in his first book, doesn’t provide any details about his own background, although readers may find the tenor of some suggestions to be European (“Listen to BBC radio for definitive English”), as they will his inclusion of Irish university photos. Overall, he’s a folksy and engaging authorial voice, offering the kind of obvious but perhaps necessary advice that one expects from an elder (such as “You can enjoy yourself well without indulging in certain practices which really do kill joy and scar life”). That said, his target readers may not embrace all that he espouses, including his advice to keep relationships “at the ‘friends’ level” as much as possible.
A sincere, simple life-instruction booklet for young adults.Pub Date: July 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5246-3687-6
Page Count: 50
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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