Penguin Press HC, The. Used - Good. . . All orders guaranteed and ship within 24 hours. Your purchase supports More Than Words, a nonprofi9780393706468 t job training program for youth, empowering youth to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business.

Synopsis

"In the beginning we were happy. And we were always excessive. So in the beginning we were happy to excess." With these opening lines Sean Wilsey takes us on an exhilarating tour of life in the strangest, wealthiest, and most grandiose of families. Sean's blond-bombshell mother (one of the thinly veiled characters in Armistead Maupin's bestselling Tales of the City ) is a 1980s society-page staple, regularly entertaining Black Panthers and movie stars in her marble and glass penthouse, "eight hundred feet in the air above San Francisco; an apartment at the top of a building at the top of a hill: full of light, full of voices, full of windows full of water and bridges and hills." His enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade and lectures his son on proper hygiene in public restrooms, "You should wash your hands first, before you use the urinal. Not after. Your penis isn't dirty. But your hands are." When Sean, "the kind of child who sings songs to sick flowers," turns nine years old, his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend. Sean's life blows apart. His mother first invites him to commit suicide with her, then has a "vision" of salvation that requires packing her Louis Vuitton luggage and traveling the globe, a retinue of multiracial children in tow. Her goal: peace on earth (and a Nobel Prize). Sean meets Indira Gandhi, Helmut Kohl, Menachem Begin, and the pope, hoping each one might come back to San Francisco and persuade his father to rejoin the family. Instead, Sean is pushed out of San Francisco and sent spiraling through five high schools, till he finally lands at an unorthodox reform school cum "therapeutic community," in Italy. With its multiplicity of settings and kaleidoscopic mix of preoccupations-sex, Russia, jet helicopters, seismic upheaval, boarding schools, Middle Earth, skinheads, home improvement, suicide, skateboarding, Sovietology, public transportation, massage, Christian fundamentalism, dogs, Texas, global thermonuclear war, truth, evil, masturbation, hope, Bethlehem, CT, eventual salvation (abridged list)— Oh the Glory of It All is memoir as bildungsroman as explosion.

Reviews

(Log in or Create an Account first!)

Details

Bookseller: More Than Words Inc. (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #: BOS-D-01c-01775
Title: Oh the Glory of It All
Author: Wilsey, Sean
Book Condition: Used - Good
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1594200513
ISBN 13: 9781594200519
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Place of Publication: New York, New York, U.s.a.
This edition first published: 2005-05

Terms of Sale

More Than Words Inc.

30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.

About the Seller

More Than Words Inc.

This seller has earned a 4 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.

Biblio member since 2016

Waltham, Massachusetts

Ask Seller a Question

About More Than Words Inc.

More Than Words empowers youth who are in foster care, court-involved, homeless or out of school to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business. MTW believes that when system-involved youth are challenged with authentic and increasing responsibilities in a business setting, and are given high expectations and a culture of support, they can and will address personal barriers to success, create concrete action plans for their lives, and become contributing members of society. More Than Words began as an online bookselling training program for youth in DCF custody in 2004 and opened its vibrant bookstore on Moody St in Waltham in 2005 and added its Starbucks coffee bar in 2008. MTW replicated its model in the South End of Boston in 2011, thereby doubling the number of youth served annually.