An immensely captivating consideration of reality TV and a moving reflection on marriage.
Intelligent musings on reality TV and marriage.
Since the massively successful reality competition show Survivor debuted in 2000, there have been hundreds of articles and books about reality TV. This one, by Mann (Creative Writing/Univ. of Massachusetts Dartmouth; Lord Fear, 2015, etc.), is enlivened and distinguished by the author’s genuine appreciation for the genre’s form and content. Mann has a shrewd eye for exposing the formulaic production values inherent in these programs, and he clearly sees beneath the celebrity ambitions of the reality stars. Yet he remains a devoted fan, understanding and sometimes reveling in who is compulsively watchable, whether it’s any one of the Kardashians, NeNe Leakes from The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Jax Taylor from Vanderpump Rules, or any of the family members who inhabit the bizarre universe of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. The author ably identifies the authentic elements in these programs that make them so compelling, and he considers how these heightened dramas and extreme personalities serve as mirrors to our lives—and, more personally, to his relationship with his wife. Their enduring bond often revolves around their shared fascination (obsessions?) with the characters who inhabit these shows, and his reflections on his marriage frequently reflect the dramas that unfold. “Somewhere in here I’m telling our story, right? That’s at least part of the idea,” he writes. “But look how it has streamlined. Look at how little life there is—just sporadic emotional plot points—even as I felt I was revealing so much. Look how I focus on the loud bangs and the sulky silences…refusing to let you and me be fully realized on the page, to be human in any way beyond broad, emotive strokes.” If Mann doesn’t quite elevate reality TV to an art form—and that’s unlikely his intention—he makes a persuasive argument for readers to sit up and take notice. The cultural implications are perhaps more potent than we’d like to believe.
An immensely captivating consideration of reality TV and a moving reflection on marriage.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-43554-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
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
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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