Confusing but open look into a life
I find it very difficult to rate and review a memoir or a biography, only because I feel as if I’m reviewing their life. You can’t review someone’s life in only the glimpses they choose to share. Although I suppose you could really. While the majority or people who produce a memoir, biography or autobiography are allowing the world into their private moments, fears, secrets and joys for us to entertain ourselves with, I feel reviewing them and rating them is casting judgements in ways I am not authorized to do. What I can review is the style, cadence and all around reading journey of the book itself. It’s hard to read, not only because of the hurt and confusion you feel coming off the pages, but because it bounces from one timeline to another and you don’t always quite know where, or when rather, you are. Although, perhaps it was meant that way to match up with how he felt trying to figure out who he is. The narrative is all over the place, almost as if instead of one cohesive story, it’s bits and pieces that you as the reader are left to fit together. It’s definitely a journey, one that will make you mad, sad, and depending on your views of the world excited for him or angry that “this” is out there. Personally, I’m glad he found happiness and comfort in who he is and is able to be a voice that many don’t have. The way it reads, at least for me, is correlative to the journey he is on to find himself. This could have also been done with adding in timelines. It’s a good read, as I find most memoirs, bios and autobios to be, read it! But when you do, be open, and be honest bout the fact that this life and these experiences were and are real for him, and so many others that at this moment in time, don’t have a voice.
