Self-sabotage And other ways I've spent my time

The author of two well-received YA novels, Self turns to an adult audience with this excellent memoir-in-stories that begins with his life as a spoiled rotten little boy and concludes with his present life, living in New York and working as a writer and actor. It's been a bit of a bumpy ride. Self discloses the three years he spent as a sex worker and provides a candid assessment of his manic depression with narcissistic tendencies, which has compromised many aspects of his still-young life (he's in his late thirties). Then there's his self-loathing, obsessions (which led to a restraining order from a former boyfriend), breakups, breakdowns, and his frequent habit of self-sabotage. Happily, there are sunnier moments too. Self writes of his love for his grandmother and for his husband Augie. He reminisces about the Tony Award--winning actor Gary Beach and his husband, who befriended Self as a lonely teenager. Self is a very clever writer (he writes of "stocking up love like canned goods"; someone is "as smooth and tanned as a Grecian olive farmer"), and there's never a dull moment in his captivating, extremely well-written stories that will have readers hoping for more.

Actor and YA novelist Self (A Very, Very Bad Thing) delivers a rollicking adult debut that charts his passage from shame to self-acceptance. "Grab a funnel cake, but don't get too comfortable," Self warns readers, before taking them on "a word-based roller coaster through the chaos that is the unfortunate theme park of my mental health." He mixes wry essays about growing up bipolar and gay in the small town of Rome, Ga., with missives about his stints as an actor, a sex worker, and a comedian, and eventually, his marriage to his husband, Augie. Dotting the narrative are playful asides (he threads lists of "Ten Reasons Not to Sabotage Your Life" throughout, but "One Hundred Reasons to Sabotage My Life" threatens to outweigh them), and though Self's ruthless honesty and self-deprecation occasionally shade into oversharing, his winning voice shines through. His conclusion--that therapy helped him deposit his myriad insecurities "into the bed of my mental pickup truck: a beat-up, gas-guzzling hunk of rusted metal filled to the sky with my endless collection of tedious, time-wasting triggers"--may not be revolutionary, but it feels genuine. This delightfully over-the-top self-portrait brims with pleasures. Agent: Alex Kane, WME. (Mar.)