Review by New York Times Review
WHY BUDDHISM IS TRUE: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, by Robert Wright. (Simon & Schuster, $17.) Can Buddhism's central tenets lead to more enlightened individuals and societies? Wright, the author of "The Moral Animal," draws on evolutionary psychology and neuroscience to make his case, weighing the advantages of mindful meditation and how it can potentially benefit humanity. THE END OF EDDY, by Edouard Louis. Translated by Michael Lucey. (Picador, $16.) This autobiographical novel follows gD0UARD a young gay boy's coming-ofage in working-class France. Growing up in a stagnating factory town, where violence and xenophobia are endemic, Eddy was subjected to torment that was only compounded by his sexuality; ultimately, his attraction to men may have been his salvation. CATTLE KINGDOM: The Hidden History of the Cowboy West, by Christopher Knowlton. (Mariner/Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $15.99.) Cattle ranching took off in the 1870s, with wealthy Northeast entrepreneurs lured by the promise of the West's rewards. Knowlton picks three novices, including Teddy Roosevelt, to illustrate the industry's boom and bust; for all the eager forecasting, the era of the cowboys lasted less than two decades. THE AWKWARD AGE, by Francesca Segal. (Riverhead, $16.) When a widowed English piano teacher and an American obstetrician fall in love in North London, their blossoming romance faces just one hurdle: their teenage children, who can't stand each other. As the families work to knit together, some prototypically English scenarios arise ("polite, brittle, utterly empty" conversations, for starters), adding humor to the drama. Our reviewer, Hermione Hoby, called this tidy novel a "spry and accomplished comedy of manners." THE SHOW THAT NEVER ENDS: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock, by David Weigel. (Norton, $17.95.) Weigel delves into the genre's history, including what it inherited from predecessors like the Beach Boys and the Beatles and its resonance today. As John Williams wrote here, the book is "a new history of the genre written by an ardent, straight-faced defender who also understands what is most outlandishly entertaining about it." PERENNIALS, by Mandy Berman. (Random House, $17.) Camp Marigold is the backdrop for this debut novel, where teenagers navigate the perils of female adolescence: puberty, friendship and, above all, sex. At the core is the friendship between Sarah and Fiona, two girls who go on to become counselors, but the book expands to include memories from generations of campers and even Marigold's director.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Desperate to change his effeminate image, French middle-school student Eddy adopts the mantra, Today I'm gonna be a tough guy, like his sometimes-violent father. But how? To hide his gay mannerisms, he keeps his hands in his pockets and tries to deepen his high-pitched voice. He even tries dating girls, but to no effect. My body, he thinks despairingly, was always rebelling against me, reminding me what I really wanted. His only hope, he thinks, is to get away from his family and the small village in northern France where he lives. To go where people wouldn't think of me as a faggot. But where can he go, and can flight truly change who he is? Translated into 20 languages and a huge hit in France, author Louis' unsparingly autobiographical novel is the story of a gay boy's attempts to come to terms with himself. Told in retrospect from the adult Eddy's perspective, the story is less a novel than a collection of linked vignettes. The first part of the book limns life in Eddy's stultifying village and offers intimate portraits of his working-class parents. The second part focuses on Eddy's coming-of-age and his emerging sexuality. Together, the two parts offer a seamless, universal portrait of the experience of growing up gay and gradually coming to accept oneself.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this excellent autobiographical novel, a middle school boy struggles to forge an identity in a French industrial town hostile in every way to his homosexuality. Beset on all sides by violent bullying, verbal ridicule, and a lack of familial support, Eddy Bellegueule has devoted himself, despite his high voice and effeminate mannerisms, to becoming a "tough guy" like his unemployed father. A series of heartbreaking setbacks occurs, including two failed relationships with women, which culminates with Eddy's mother discovering him in a compromising sexual situation. The story finally leads to a powerful farewell scene between Eddy and his father, a momentary demonstration of devotion inextricable from the years of pain that the man has caused the boy. Already translated into 20 languages, this concise novel adroitly captures the downstream effects of reactionary rural culture, heightened by the rise of hard-right ideology and the destabilization of the working class in contemporary Europe, granting its reader an extraordinary portrait of trauma and escape. Agent: Jacqueline Ko, the Wylie Agency. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Louis was born in a factory town in northern France with the name of his narrator, Eddy Bellegueule, a real tough guy's name (bellegueule means, roughly, "beautiful trap," with trap here meaning mouth). But anguished young Eddy is no tough guy, instead suffering constant bullying for his so-called fancy ways; even his parents call him pussy, the worst insult they could deliver. In a place where men are expected to be men and women and children can expect to be belted into submission, Eddy is the relentlessly targeted outsider disproving the adage that names can never hurt you and suffering real beatings besides. Fighting panic attacks, skirting his tormentors, trying to get it on with girls before "losing the battle between my desire to become a tough guy and the desire of my own body," Eddy finally finds a convincing and satisfying way to triumph, if imperfectly. VERDICT An autobiographical first novel that made Louis a star in France and an international sensation, this work is occasionally repetitious but ultimately deeply affecting. [See Prepub Alert, 12/1/16.] © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
"We are always playing roles and there is a certain truth to masks": an absorbing but sobering roman clef by philosopher/novelist Louis and a sharply pointed coming-of-age tale.Kenneth Rexroth, the American poet, published a memoir that bore the title An Autobiographical Novel, he said, at the insistence of the lawyers. No one save for Louis, born Eddy Bellegueule in 1992, can say for sure where novel begins and memoir ends here; the book reads like autobiography unadorned except for occasional dark-lyrical moments, as with the anti-Proustian opening sentence: "From my childhood I have no happy memories." It's abundantly evident, just a few pages in, why Louis should make such a declaration, for though he lives in la belle France, it's in the nearly Appalachian countryside of Picardy, where a gay kid such as himself is a playground victim from the get-go. His father, whoshudderdrinks box wine, box after box, is a raging brute descended from other raging brutes, wants nothing more than to toughen up a boy who won't be toughened. Mom is, like a sans-culotte, "torn between absolute submission to power and an enduring sense of revolt." She smokes like a chimney, aware that it's no good for her but seemingly unconcerned that her asthmatic son might be suffering. Eddy is smart and obliging, even though "being an obedient student at school was considered girlish," and nobody out in the sticks can figure him out except to peg him as "Bellegueule, the homo." Throughout, he grapples with that identity, determined to make himself manly, attempting to convince himself, "Maybe I'm not gaymaybe I've just always had a bourgeois body that was trapped in the world of my childhood." And on the other side of that struggle, self-discovery awaits, patiently. The best moments of this good though certainly dispiriting book are those in which we sense that better things await the protagonist in a world far beyond his window. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
