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THE END IS THE BEGINNING

A PERSONAL HISTORY OF MY MOTHER

A sensitive chronicle of sadness.

A daughter bears witness to her mother’s pain.

Memoirist, poet, and novelist Bialosky unfurls her mother’s life from the time of her death, in 2020, to her birth in 1933, creating an affecting family history of loss and grief. Iris Bialosky was living in a skilled nursing home residence when she died, suffering from dementia. Because she had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety throughout her life, it took years to finally identify her final affliction. For the author and her sisters, the diagnosis was not surprising. “In one way or another,” she reflected at the time, “it feels as if we sisters have tried to hold our mother together for most of our lives.” Their father died of a heart attack at the age of 30, when the girls were barely toddlers, leaving Iris a single parent, overwhelmed with responsibility for her children and consumed with grief. As the author grew up, she was well aware that her home life was far different from that of her friends. Her mother “never asks to see my grades. She doesn’t iron or wash my clothes. She rarely has food in the fridge. I am afraid to ask her for anything. All of us are.” Iris’ husband’s death was not the only cause of her recurring depression, the “dark tentacles” that invaded her. Iris’ mother had died when she was 9, leaving her father in constant mourning and her longing for her mother’s love. As a young widow, Iris hoped to remarry; her short-lived joy from a second marriage—and a fourth daughter—ended in a bitter divorce and, later, that daughter’s death by suicide. Unspooling the events of her mother’s life, Bialosky reveals, has helped her to understand both the parent who at times seemed so remote and her own place in her family’s fraught history.

A sensitive chronicle of sadness.

Pub Date: May 6, 2025

ISBN: 9781451677928

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Washington Square Press/Atria

Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025

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I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED

The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.

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The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.

In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.

The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.

Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022

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GREENLIGHTS

A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.

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All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.

“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.

A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.

Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020

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