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lisawhelpley's review against another edition
5.0
Loved this book. Painfully accurate descriptions of life as a seventh grader. It will make you cringe, but then some of the sentences are simply delightful.
lyrareadsbooks's review against another edition
2.0
The style of this memoir is so frantic, that my reading pace increased until I ended up doing more skimming than reading, which left plenty of time for my mind to wander. Here are some of the places it went (in no particular order)
"This sentence is grammatically correct even though it is 8 lines of text long."
"Are all McSweeney's authors over-educated white males of roughly forty years of age who grew up outside of the New York metro area?"
"Did Kevin Brockmeier attend the same writing workshop I did where Barbara Samuel asked us to revisit the trauma of seventh grade? If so, I don't think he understood the part about tapping into emotion because there isn't much depth to this story."
"My guess is both Kevin Brockmeier and David Eggers would dismiss me as a reader because of my inadequate feeble mind." [Yup - I'm a stupid PhD drop out]
"That part with the 'hypothetical memoir,' the section with the switch, was terrific. I wonder what his fiction is like?"
"Where did I pick up this recommendation? I must be more skeptical."
"Does he hang out with Ned Beauman? They both like adjectives...."
"This sentence is grammatically correct even though it is 8 lines of text long."
"Are all McSweeney's authors over-educated white males of roughly forty years of age who grew up outside of the New York metro area?"
"Did Kevin Brockmeier attend the same writing workshop I did where Barbara Samuel asked us to revisit the trauma of seventh grade? If so, I don't think he understood the part about tapping into emotion because there isn't much depth to this story."
"My guess is both Kevin Brockmeier and David Eggers would dismiss me as a reader because of my inadequate feeble mind." [Yup - I'm a stupid PhD drop out]
"That part with the 'hypothetical memoir,' the section with the switch, was terrific. I wonder what his fiction is like?"
"Where did I pick up this recommendation? I must be more skeptical."
"Does he hang out with Ned Beauman? They both like adjectives...."
davygibbs's review against another edition
4.0
As a longtime fan of Kevin Brockmeier's fiction, I was thrilled to hear he'd published a memoir. I ordered it immediately and set everything else aside when it arrived...but if I was hoping for a lighthearted, minutely-detailed recounting of those fuzzily awkward middle school years, I soon learned I'd be getting nothing of the kind. In fact, the narrative quickly became almost sickeningly raw and I began to understand that this book was not ever meant to be fun, nor even redemptive. This book had been a devil crouching on its author's shoulder, an ugly, hurtful, sentient mass of trials and hardships he faced as a new teenager, experiences at once routine and truly unnerving. Events that fall short of tragedy but are here rendered in such heavy tones that I'm impressed he ever came out on the other side. It's a good book, and reading it is not a struggle, but it isn't a joy either. The darkness here dominates and what little radiance Brockmeier sees fit to include, well, it simply isn't as convincing. The bullying episodes in particular, though almost entirely psychological, are truly upsetting. It almost feels like a kind of torture, as I'm sure it seemed to young Kevin. In the end, the book does feel necessary, but moreso for the author than his readership. It is a bloodletting of sorts, and not one I'm particularly glad to have witnessed.
serinde4books's review against another edition
3.0
This was a book I received in one of my Book Riot boxes. The description is "At age twelve, Kevin Brockmeier is ready to become a different person: not the boy he has always been—the one who cries too easily and laughs too easily, who lives in an otherland of sparkling daydreams and imaginary catastrophes—but someone else altogether. Over the course of one school year—seventh grade—he sets out in search of himself. Along the way, he happens into his first kiss at a church party, struggles to understand why his old friends tease him at the lunch table, becomes the talk of the entire school thanks to his Halloween costume, and booby-traps his lunch to deter a thief."
I really was not thrilled with this book. The cruelty of the 7th grade boys hit a little too close to home for me I guess. I found myself forcing myself to read and just hurry the f**k through. The problem wasn't the writing, he had great writing, it was the storyline. I felt too much like the bullying I experienced in 7th grade and I didn't want to relive those feeling through another character, my experiences were enough. I did force my self to finish, and the ending was a little better than the beginning. Junior High is a rough time, and this reminded me just how much. I suppose it is a credit to Brockmeier that his writing did resurface so many memories.
For additional reviews please see my blog at www.adventuresofabibliophile.blogspot.com
I really was not thrilled with this book. The cruelty of the 7th grade boys hit a little too close to home for me I guess. I found myself forcing myself to read and just hurry the f**k through. The problem wasn't the writing, he had great writing, it was the storyline. I felt too much like the bullying I experienced in 7th grade and I didn't want to relive those feeling through another character, my experiences were enough. I did force my self to finish, and the ending was a little better than the beginning. Junior High is a rough time, and this reminded me just how much. I suppose it is a credit to Brockmeier that his writing did resurface so many memories.
For additional reviews please see my blog at www.adventuresofabibliophile.blogspot.com
toasted_rice's review
5.0
Some passages I liked:
"Sometimes if Kevin paces himself just right, he will fall into step with Sarah Bell and her friends -- the lip gloss girls -- with brush furrows in their wet hair and Guess triangles on their jeans. He basks in their incense of sweat and shampoo, thinking, This will be the day, the day I tell her a joke and graze her arm, a throwaway touch with the back sides of my fingers, nothing much, just quick and cool, as if I don't care, but then a locker slams shut or a voice cuts through the air and once again the tiny comforting thought caresses his mind: Tomorrow. You can be brave tomorrow."
"The rest of the day glides lightly over the treetops and to the ground. Kevin has a funny sensation of freedom and blamelessness, as if he is secretly at school on some dream of a Saturday, pretending along with everyone else that it's important to attend class and obey the bells."
"Then she is inches away, her face diving in to kiss him, and Thad and Kenneth can go to hell, because he is better, he is better, he is better."
"Before them stretches the real world, where kids stand on the patio of the school eating chips and sandwiches and the clouds cascade over the parking lot, their reflections floating along on a great curved river of windshields. He sees Chuck and Alex in their letter jackets, and some ninth graders massed by the hallway's glass doors, and girls too, at least a dozen girls with their white Keds and purses, earrings and cosmetics mirrors, and the sight of all those people whose lives are theirs, completely theirs, their lives and not his, people who have spent the last few minutes mingling in front of the school with no one looking for ways to hurt them, makes him feel unusually bold."
"The rafters don't absorb his voice but instead widen it, strengthen it, so that it takes on the shape of the room. He feels as big as the gym, as big as the school. He is not a normal person anymore. He could be Giant-Man or Galactus, the Rock Biter with his good strong hands, a senior getting ready to graduate and go to college, to meet a girl and get married, to stride out into his life. Not Darnell maybe, but someone like him. Most Spirited. Best Smile."
"Sometimes if Kevin paces himself just right, he will fall into step with Sarah Bell and her friends -- the lip gloss girls -- with brush furrows in their wet hair and Guess triangles on their jeans. He basks in their incense of sweat and shampoo, thinking, This will be the day, the day I tell her a joke and graze her arm, a throwaway touch with the back sides of my fingers, nothing much, just quick and cool, as if I don't care, but then a locker slams shut or a voice cuts through the air and once again the tiny comforting thought caresses his mind: Tomorrow. You can be brave tomorrow."
"The rest of the day glides lightly over the treetops and to the ground. Kevin has a funny sensation of freedom and blamelessness, as if he is secretly at school on some dream of a Saturday, pretending along with everyone else that it's important to attend class and obey the bells."
"Then she is inches away, her face diving in to kiss him, and Thad and Kenneth can go to hell, because he is better, he is better, he is better."
"Before them stretches the real world, where kids stand on the patio of the school eating chips and sandwiches and the clouds cascade over the parking lot, their reflections floating along on a great curved river of windshields. He sees Chuck and Alex in their letter jackets, and some ninth graders massed by the hallway's glass doors, and girls too, at least a dozen girls with their white Keds and purses, earrings and cosmetics mirrors, and the sight of all those people whose lives are theirs, completely theirs, their lives and not his, people who have spent the last few minutes mingling in front of the school with no one looking for ways to hurt them, makes him feel unusually bold."
"The rafters don't absorb his voice but instead widen it, strengthen it, so that it takes on the shape of the room. He feels as big as the gym, as big as the school. He is not a normal person anymore. He could be Giant-Man or Galactus, the Rock Biter with his good strong hands, a senior getting ready to graduate and go to college, to meet a girl and get married, to stride out into his life. Not Darnell maybe, but someone like him. Most Spirited. Best Smile."
corrinpierce's review against another edition
3.0
I'm exactly the right age for this book, and it was fun as a little ethnographical study of an awkward age at a very specific time, but that was it.
nbrickman's review
3.0
Definitely enjoyed some of the writing style and the beauty of the descriptions, but overall it just didn't strike me the way I want to be struck by a memoir. I can't really verbalize why this is the case though.
bibli0rach's review against another edition
4.0
Written like a novel, with the subject as main character, Kevin's experiences and junior high awkwardness are perfectly captured. Since I live with a 7th grade son, I'm not sure if this resonated with me more than it would otherwise.
voya_k's review
5.0
Exquisite memoir of what it was like to be a nerdy pipsqueak 7th grader who is good at writing and jokes and Not Much Else in 1985. Period details were On Point (identifying as a Night Court person rather than a Family Ties person, f'rinstance or a whole glorious page about snack foods), but more importantly the utter emotional confusion of 7th grade is all right here. Esp. as to how it affects smart kids who don't know they are nerds yet.
Up there with The Body by Stephen King on the subject of middle school boy life.
Now I want to read all the Brockmeier.
Up there with The Body by Stephen King on the subject of middle school boy life.
Now I want to read all the Brockmeier.