Eve is at the top of her game. She’s a bestselling author with a handsome husband she met in college, and five children. Her last book was such a huge success that it was adapted into a film, and she and her family got to walk the red carpet during the premiere.
One day, Eve awakens in a hospital bed. Her head hurts and she has no idea how she got there; in fact, her memory is quite fuzzy and she has trouble finding words.
“She keeps searching her head for clues, but comes across great gaps instead. What’s happened to her brain? It feels patchy and incompetent and not like herself at all.”
Eve learns that she had a brain tumor, which required surgery to remove it. She later learns that the tumor was malignant, but she’ll do everything she can to keep it from returning. She has to relearn how to walk, talk, think, even write. But she doesn’t wallow in her diagnosis; she’s determined to fight back.
The story touches on the highlights and lowlights of regaining her health and rebuilding her life. From telling her beloved children about her diagnosis to recognizing all that her husband has gone through since her surgery, Eve realizes how fortunate she is. And she embraces the simple things that bring her joy—a walk with her husband, a good marmalade, buying the dress when you want to.
This is so powerful but it’s shockingly more matter-of-fact than maudlin. The book is told in vignettes marking steps in Eve’s journey. But what makes the book more profound is that this novel is fairly autobiographical: Sophie Kinsella dealt with the same diagnosis and had the same support system. This is a departure from Kinsella’s usually lighthearted books, but her storytelling is impeccable.
"Words like affected or effeminate could always be heard in the mouths of adults around me: not just at school and not only by the two boys. They were like razor blades that would cut me for hours, for days, when I heard them, words I picked up and repeated to myself. I told myself over and over that they were right. I wished I could change. But my body would never obey me, and so the insults would start up again."
Eddy Bellegueule, a young man growing up in a poor town in northern France, is forced to confront how different he is from his peers at an early age. While he wants to be viewed as a man, as masculine, his voice is higher than most, his mannerisms are effeminate, he is unathletic (and not really motivated to try playing sports), and as much as he tries, he cannot hide his growing attraction to men. This spells disaster for a young man among lower class and working class people, whose favorite pastimes include drinking, getting into fights, fighting while drinking, and bragging about their sexual conquests.
The sad part is, the abuse Eddy takes isn't just at the hands of classmates or fellow townspeople—it comes from his own family, who don't understand how or why he is what he is, and are embarrassed that someone like him can be tied to them. While he hears his parents use racial and cultural slurs constantly, he also must get used to his father calling people (including him, from time to time) "faggot" and other derogatory names. It is a depressing life for Eddy; at times he tries valiantly to live along the margins and hopefully go unnoticed, and other times he tries to do what will help him "pass"—find a girlfriend, get into fights, attempt to have sex. But it is difficult for Eddy to escape his true identity.
"And yet I had understood that living a lie was the only chance I had of bringing a new truth into existence. Becoming a different person meant thinking of myself as a different person, believing I was something I wasn't so that gradually, step by step, I could become it."
The End of Eddy is nearly relentless in its brutal depiction of a young man coming to terms with his sexuality and his identity in an environment in which being different is not only discouraged but often met with physical violence and emotional abuse. This is an autobiographical novel, and Édouard Louis brings tremendous emotion to this story of a boy so desperate for approval and love from those around them that he is willing to destroy who he really is, just in the hopes that his parents and siblings would treat him differently.
This was a beautifully written but difficult book to read, because it was very bleak, but Louis treads carefully in not painting his characters as too black and white; you can see that Eddy's parents just don't know what to make of their son, and want to love him but want him to live an easier life, too.
At times, The End of Eddy was a little emotionally uncomfortable for me. It certainly brought back painful memories of adolescence, of desperately trying to be "normal" yet dealing with the slurs of people who wanted to label me because I was different. And of course, different isn't bad, but they didn't see that. But while this book is a tough read, it does sound a note of hopefulness as well, because sometimes the simple act of embracing who you are is what you need to combat those who try and bring you down.
I don't know if this is a book for everyone, but it definitely is one that will make you think and make you feel. It made me grateful that I am where I am at this point in my life, and while no one's life is 100 percent struggle-free, it truly does get better.
So, I kinda have a thing for Anna Kendrick. I've been (healthily) obsessed with her since 2003, when she appeared in an indie movie called Camp, which was about kids attending a performing arts summer camp in upstate New York.
Anna played a young girl named Fritzi, who had an obsession with a girl named Jill, who starred in most of the plays that summer. But Jill mistreated Fritzi, so in the end, Fritzi got her revenge, as you'll see in the clip below. And fandom was born. (For those offended by strong language, the f-word appears once. Anna shows up about 25 seconds into the clip.)
Not only do I think she's an exceptionally talented singer and performer (I've worn out tracks from Into the Woods and The Last Five Years because I play them so much), but every time I see her on a talk show or make another appearance, I'm convinced that if we had anything in common (other than my admiration), we'd be super-close friends. We're both reasonably foul-mouthed, although not in a mean way (I hide it well when I have to) and totally sarcastic (again, not in a mean way), and neither of us suffers fools gladly. Seems like enough to build a friendship on, don't you think?
My instincts about her were definitely reinforced in Scrappy Little Nobody, her new collection of autobiographical essays which spanned from her childhood to the current time, tracing her anxieties, successes, fears, hang-ups, obsessions, and her sexual history. (Kind of.) This isn't a tell-all book in any way (although she has some nice things to say about a few celebrities, like Zac Efron), but rather a first-hand look at the growth of a star, from her earliest (disastrous) beginnings as a child in dance class to success, including Tony and Oscar nominations.
"I'd thought of myself as fearful and shrinking in childhood, but I was often single-minded and pugnacious. From age three onward I have been practical and skeptical and occasionally more courageous than I have any right to be."
At times uproariously funny (I seriously laughed out loud more than a few times) and incredibly self-aware, this is a tremendously entertaining book, but Kendrick isn't afraid to take herself down more than a few notches as often as she deems it necessary. Referring to her performing a local production of Annie when she was younger, she said:
"To this day, seeing a tattered brown cardigan or a pair of thin-soled lace-up boots makes my heart sing. In a costume context, not, like, on a person. I'm not some out-of-touch monster who sees real-world poverty and longs for the days of her musical-theater beginnings."
And of losing the Tony Award:
"I lost a Tony Award to Broadway legend Audra McDonald when I was twelve, so I've been a bitter bitch since before my first period...I also feel that if I had won and made a televised speech at age twelve, the delayed embarrassment would have been so severe, I'd currently be a Howard Hughes-style shut-in, but without the money for the mansion or the planes or the legion of servants to take away bottles of my urine."
This is frank and funny, and Kendrick doesn't mince words, and she says what's on her mind, so if candid conversation about her sex life and liberal use of curses bothers you, you might want to steer clear of this. But if not, this is the rare portrait of a talented star who takes herself less seriously than nearly anyone. It's refreshing and a hell of a lot of fun. (And I still think we could be friends once we stopped trying to one-up each other.)
Full disclosure: I received an advance readers copy of this book from NetGalleys in exchange for an unbiased review.
The last year of college is often fun, but the level of tension and uncertainty ratchets up for many students. There is often uncertainty—even fear—about what you're going to do with the rest of your life, where the money to support you will come from (if you aren't working while going to school), even what will become of the relationships you have. And unless you have a job lined up after college, you're often suffering from some general insecurity as well.
David Shapiro, in his autobiographical novel You're Not Much Use to Anyone, is suffering from all of those feelings. After graduating early from NYU, he doesn't know what he wants to do with his life (although his parents, who are supporting him financially, expect him to go to law school). He's a little insecure about himself physically, and his self-esteem only seems to blossom when he's in a relationship. But he's not quite willing to give himself entirely to relationships, and whenever one of his girlfriends leaves for a job opportunity or something else, he's ready to end the relationship instead of dealing with worries about her cheating on him with someone better.
David gets a job working in the file room of a large company, although it's clear to everyone he's tremendously overqualified for what he does. But it's a good way to make money of his own, and allegedly study for the LSATs. Plus, he can pacify his demanding mother and his conspiracy theory-prone father.
The one thing David is passionate about is the music review site Pitchfork. So many of the reviews he reads on the site infuriate him, and he resents the power this website has to destroy the career of up and coming bands with negative reviews, and build up a less deserving band (in David's mind) with hype and praise. So after ranting about Pitchfork to anyone who will listen, he decides to set up his own Tumblr blog in which he reviews Pitchfork reviews, called Pitchfork Reviews Reviews. Of course, he doesn't have a computer, so he types up the entries surreptitiously on his Blackberry and sends them to his roommate, who posts them on David's behalf. (But no one can no that.)
Before long, David's Tumblr blog has become quite popular, and even the media has taken interest. However, his insecurity hasn't changed, as he takes any negative comments personally. The success of his site doesn't lessen his anxiety that he might lose his job or that his parents might make him stop writing and demand he apply to law school. And it doesn't solve his romantic problems either. What's a guy to do?
You're Not Much Use to Anyone accurately captured the anxieties and insecurities of a recent college graduate, and did so with a lot of humor and emotion. Shapiro doesn't paint himself as a wholly sympathetic character—at times his inability to identify with his girlfriends' moods made it difficult to feel sorry for him when the relationships went awry. But he's definitely an amusing character, and his adventures (such as they were) made for a fun read. And now that I've finished the book, I wonder just how autobiographical this "novel" really is—were only the names changed to protect the innocent, or were some of the situations fictionalized as well? (It doesn't matter, I'm just curious.)
Grant Achatz is one of the most acclaimed chefs in the US, if not the world. His Chicago restaurant, Alinea, has been ranked among the best in the world. He mastered his culinary artistry under the tutelage of Chef Thomas Keller, of Bouchon and The French Laundry, but has taken molecular gastronomy and culinary genius to a whole different level. And in 2007, at the height of his and the restaurant's success, Achatz was diagnosed with Stage 4-b squamous cell carcinoma—tongue cancer. (There is no Stage 5.) While most doctors advised Achatz to have a portion of his tongue surgically removed, thereby ending his career, he underwent an alternative treatment of chemotherapy and radiation first. But there were some sacrifices he would have to make.
Life, on the Line: A Chef's Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat is more than a book about Achatz's struggle with cancer and how it affected those around him, including Kokonas, his business partner at Alinea. (In fact, the cancer battle really doesn't come up until the last quarter of the book.) The book traces the genesis of his love of cooking, his struggles in the competitive and harrowing culinary world, and his desire to reinvent the way people approach and eat food. For a foodie like me, I couldn't read the book fast enough—it made me hungry and it made me long to be back in the culinary world myself. Having the opportunity to ride on Achatz's shoulder throughout his journey is an amazing one, and the book (especially when Kokonas begins co-narrating the story, as plans for Alinea start to take shape) doesn't make Achatz out to be a saint. It portrays him accurately, even while he undergoes painfully brutal treatment for cancer.
This is a tremendously well-written, captivating and uplifting book for so many reasons. It is a privilege to understand what shapes Achatz's culinary philosophy and what goes into his culinary creations. And to watch as he approaches cancer with the same strength he faced every other challenge, including not being taken seriously as a chef, is amazing. He may be an incredible chef, but it is clear from this book that Grant Achatz is a pretty incredible man as well.
