Helpful Score: 3
A great read about San Francisco society, dish, dish, dish.
Helpful Score: 2
I was very disappointed! It was boring.
Certainly an interesting memoir - a fascinating look into the world of the very wealthy. I wanted to be more sympathetic to the author, as the adults in his life really were awful to him as a child, but he comes across as whiny and not quite over every childhood slight.
I loved this book. Very well written. An interesting look into the life of the wealthy and the want-to-be-famous. One of the most honest looks at "family" you will read.
Helpful Score: 1
I'm not usually one to read a memoir, especially one of someone I am not familiar with, but every once in a while a description will struck my fancy and I'll take a stab at one. This one's setting was what intrigued me, San Francisco being the writer's home and place between boarding schools to which he returns to reek havoc upon with his friends stealing motorized scooters and skateboarding down its famous steep hills. This is a story of a boy with some very eccentric parents and how he finagles his way through their divorces and fleeting passions. I had a difficult time getting into this book at first, I probably could have finished it quicker, but once engrossed I couldn't put it down. The things that happen, it almost makes the reader wonder if some of it's made up, but you don't really care if it is because it's just so interesting. His mom wrote a book about the same experiences, I'm curious to see how that one compares.
self involved, "woe is me" rich kid complains about his childhood
Interesting, bizarre memoir of the son of a San Francisco social figure. The author's style reminds me of Dave Egger's "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" and also Augusten Burroughs' "Running with Scissors."
Very good and humourous but also very sad.
Sorry, just couldn't get through it. Boring.
** spoiler alert **
Had Sean Wilsey's parents not been ridiculously wealthy this memoir would never have been published. It seems like a real-life "Youth in Revolt," but with San Francisco street names strewn about and only a hint of amusement. I didn't find anything particularly inspiring about the writing, itself; there were no fabulous metaphors or turns-of-phrase. It was bland. At the very end - two pages from it? - he makes an insightful observation about the nature of a memoir. That paragraph was moving.
Wilsey's demonization of his step-mother seemed unreal; surely, a woman cannot be this evil. I have my doubts about the veracity of Wilsey's claims; there are always two sides to every story.
I found the chapters on the Amity school to be just plain weird. Wilsey seems proud to have been brainwashed. It's not normal to cry for three days and feel a compulsive need to confess every transgression from stealing naked pics of your mom to stealing a dinner fork.
I almost feel like he's trying to establish a "poor-little-rich-boy" mentality. The rest of us didn't have dads flying us to boarding schools in helicopters and enough money to send us to Italy for four years.
Alsowho has crab lice for a year and doesn't treat it?!? Eww!
Had Sean Wilsey's parents not been ridiculously wealthy this memoir would never have been published. It seems like a real-life "Youth in Revolt," but with San Francisco street names strewn about and only a hint of amusement. I didn't find anything particularly inspiring about the writing, itself; there were no fabulous metaphors or turns-of-phrase. It was bland. At the very end - two pages from it? - he makes an insightful observation about the nature of a memoir. That paragraph was moving.
Wilsey's demonization of his step-mother seemed unreal; surely, a woman cannot be this evil. I have my doubts about the veracity of Wilsey's claims; there are always two sides to every story.
I found the chapters on the Amity school to be just plain weird. Wilsey seems proud to have been brainwashed. It's not normal to cry for three days and feel a compulsive need to confess every transgression from stealing naked pics of your mom to stealing a dinner fork.
I almost feel like he's trying to establish a "poor-little-rich-boy" mentality. The rest of us didn't have dads flying us to boarding schools in helicopters and enough money to send us to Italy for four years.
Alsowho has crab lice for a year and doesn't treat it?!? Eww!
Enjoyed it but felt a bit long. After awhile, it seemed like one boarding school story after another.
If you live in SF you cannot avoid hearing about the "society people" this books gives more dirt and info on many of them.
It is brand new
