Reviews

Adult/High School-This book consists of disjointed paragraphs, childish drawings, serious father issues, and a wide variety of page layouts. But the fact that it was written by a former child star and current indie actor whose battles with his father are well documented lends an overarching semiautobiographical theme that ties these pieces together into snapshots of Culkin's celebrity life. Calling this title fiction may be a bit of a stretch. There's no plot, although there are several recurring stories about Monkey Monkey Boy, former child star. The book is more a journal written by a fictional character named Junior, and it reads exactly like one. Now 25, the author may or may not have written this as part of a therapeutic process. (He drops hints that he has.) His emotions are certainly laid bare. Culkin touches on such issues as how you become who you are, how every little thing that happens to you matters, and how you make the transition to adulthood. Teens who are journaling can find a lot of inspiration in his insights. Those who have enjoyed his movies will find this peek into his soul fascinating.-Jamie Watson, Harford County Public Library, MD Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

This self-indulgently infantile book is a novel in only the loosest sense: it looks and reads more like a book-length zine. Amid quizzes, comics, poetry, journal entries, lists (one to-do: "Pump my own gas") and bits of narrative, child star Culkin, through the persona of Junior, tackles the emotional fallout from his years struggling under the parenting-and, inseparably, the career management-of an abusive father. Though Culkin protests that Junior the character is not Culkin the author, the line seems pretty thin. Early on, Junior notes that he's "not a writer," and few readers will argue. But as a calculated piece of celebrity implosion, the book is weirdly compelling. Passages dealing directly with the father are uniformly powerful: smart and tragic. Unfortunately, this rich central conflict gets buried beneath interminable bellyaching over the writing process, half-baked philosophical musing and go-nowhere overtures to a woman who no longer loves him. Of all the ironies Culkin tries to engage (as when overgrown rich kid Junior asks, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a place in the country like we talked about?"), the book's biggest is that it's best when it sticks with Daddy. (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.