eml898's review against another edition
2.0
Sean Wilsey tells his long story in a bit of a play-by-play fashion. I found it difficult to empathise with him. maybe says more about me than him, but the rich kid fuck up storyline is hard for me to care about.
anniew415's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed this memoir quite a bit...and not just because I knew a lot of the people mentioned in it. Wilsey writes a fun, fast-paced, exciting memoir and it's really enjoyable!
I did think things slowed down a time or two here and there and I didn't really understand all of what he was talking about when describing his group therapy sessions, but overall it works.
An entertaining ride of sadness, extravagance, high society, San Francisco stories, and a tale of a little boy lost...
I did think things slowed down a time or two here and there and I didn't really understand all of what he was talking about when describing his group therapy sessions, but overall it works.
An entertaining ride of sadness, extravagance, high society, San Francisco stories, and a tale of a little boy lost...
heathernj9's review against another edition
4.0
Dark humor, very funny and telling memoir. He works for McSweeney's.
leilaniann's review against another edition
2.0
I was interested in reading this book because the bulk of it is set in SF, and since I am from the bay I love reading about it. The backdrop of the story did not disappoint, but unfortunately, the book was 1-200 pages too long. It dragged in a major way, especially the details about the author's time spent in several different schools. Also, at one point he uses a passage from the book Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami to help describe one of the schools he goes to, and the passage goes on for multiple pages. I have never seen such a long passage from another book used in this way; it felt incredibly lazy. If you care about the real people he is talking about from SF's "high society," then you will be happy to read this book for the gossip, but in general the book was not worth the amount of time I put into.
irena_smith's review against another edition
4.0
The first Goodreads review I saw pretty much nails it: "weird and funny and engrossing and moving... awkward and good." Also long (479 pages). But I didn't want it to end, not for a minute. There's a scene early on in which young Sean cuts a strategically placed hole in a Playboy centerfold and tries to... you know. "I love you," he says to the centerfold. "I want to have babies with you." The description continues: "I pressed myself down and she crinkled. This was not glorious."
I mean, how do you not continue reading? Especially after Sean's wealthy father leaves his mother for her gold-digging best friend, the best friend's ex-husband marries author Danielle Steel (who apparently also had an affair with Sean's father), the best friend becomes the kind of stepmother that makes Snow White seem lucky, Sean's mother becomes a global peace emissary (but not before inviting Sean to leap off a high-rise balcony with her), and Sean becomes a low-key skateboarding hooligan flying over the hills of San Francisco when he's not being bounced between boarding schools. Eventually he ends up at Amity, a therapeutic boarding school straight out of Murakami's Norwegian Wood, only this one is in a 16th-century palazzo in Tuscany; there, among people who take a benevolent interest in him, he begins to slow down. "Thank God there was a place, briefly, where tenderness was possible, in exchange for money," he writes. He finds himself. He makes lifelong friends. He returns to the US and starts digging into his family history and the history of San Francisco. He becomes a writer.
Apart from masterfully capturing a moment in time—San Francisco in the '80s and '90s in particular—this is also memoir-as-revenge, which, if I'm being honest, is my favorite kind, especially if it's done well. This is done well; Sean names names and squeezes juicy details for all they're worth, and if rumors are true that the evil stepmother hired a PR company to do damage control in the wake of its publication—well, that's pretty glorious, isn't it?
I mean, how do you not continue reading? Especially after Sean's wealthy father leaves his mother for her gold-digging best friend, the best friend's ex-husband marries author Danielle Steel (who apparently also had an affair with Sean's father), the best friend becomes the kind of stepmother that makes Snow White seem lucky, Sean's mother becomes a global peace emissary (but not before inviting Sean to leap off a high-rise balcony with her), and Sean becomes a low-key skateboarding hooligan flying over the hills of San Francisco when he's not being bounced between boarding schools. Eventually he ends up at Amity, a therapeutic boarding school straight out of Murakami's Norwegian Wood, only this one is in a 16th-century palazzo in Tuscany; there, among people who take a benevolent interest in him, he begins to slow down. "Thank God there was a place, briefly, where tenderness was possible, in exchange for money," he writes. He finds himself. He makes lifelong friends. He returns to the US and starts digging into his family history and the history of San Francisco. He becomes a writer.
Apart from masterfully capturing a moment in time—San Francisco in the '80s and '90s in particular—this is also memoir-as-revenge, which, if I'm being honest, is my favorite kind, especially if it's done well. This is done well; Sean names names and squeezes juicy details for all they're worth, and if rumors are true that the evil stepmother hired a PR company to do damage control in the wake of its publication—well, that's pretty glorious, isn't it?
tashaw's review against another edition
DNF p.224-- only made it that far because I was in a waiting room. Just not for me; I was bored. I need to stick to horror/fantasy/scifi
kirstiecat's review against another edition
3.0
This follows the autobiographical (though I am sure rather embellished) account of the son of a famous millionaire family (the Wilseys) on the West coast of America. Life must be weird when you grew up around Danielle Steele and I would guess things could only get better from then on. Our protagonist is a wreck and can't seem to get over the separation and divorce of his parents. While it's true that their relationships becomes strained with him caught in the middle and that he is not given the same great attention is new step siblings are, this is no male Cinderella here. The bottom line is that he has thousands more opportunities than most kids get and was raised in luxury. What he did instead of try to work through his issues and prove to his new step mom that he wasn't a complete wastrel is to fulfill her prophesies and flunk out of every rich school his parents sent him to acquiring all kinds of drug habits and venereal diseases in the meantime. As his options wane, the schools become successively more restrictive and like prisons but it's really his own choices and volition that have brought him these consequences and I can't say I felt too sorry for him at all. What I disliked greatly about the book is that I think his point was that you were supposed to feel a little sorry for him. He makes a huge effort with his poor me routine and makes his eventual recovery seem like this magnificent feat when the truth is many more have done greater things with less. The only slight satisfaction I received is that the stepmom, who I hated even more than the main protagonist, probably received her just desserts when the book was released and slandered her.
totallyshana's review against another edition
2.0
Thank god this is over. The only reason this gets an okay rating was because the section of the book about boarding school and skateboarding was moderately entertaining. This book was about 350 pages too long, and I imagine it would only be interesting if you were also a Wilsey.