The Big Book of Misunderstanding - Softcover

Gladstone, Jim

3.6

25 ratings by Goodreads

9781560233824: The Big Book of Misunderstanding

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1560233826 ISBN 13: 9781560233824

Publisher: Harrington Park Pr, 2002

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Joshua Royalton navigates his difficult childhood, his high school years, and early adulthood, as he discovers he is gay, contemplates suicide, and comes out to his parents.

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From the Publisher:

"This is some of the most evocative writing about childhood that I have come across." - Joseph Olshan, author of Nightswimmer and Clara's Heart This is a sharp book, full of sad-funny feelings. Starting from the candy wrappers, toy parts, and over-loved stuffed animals scattered on childhood's floor, Gladstone traces a young man's journey to self-sensitivity, with hilarious and painful turns along the way."

- Mike Albo, author of Hornito: My Lie Life "This book is sweet and true and surprisingly honest...I related to all the characters in the book. I have met people like them. I've even been a few of them."

-Susan Werner, Songwriter/Recording Artist (Last of

the Good Straight Girls, New Nonfiction)

From the Author:

I wrote this book hoping to tweak two old literary standards.

First, I wanted to write a coming-of-age story in which it wasn't only teenagers who came of age; I wanted to show that people keep growing up, at all stages of life, and that parents often grow along with their kids.

Second, I wanted to write a book with a young gay narrator that was something other than a "coming-out" story. In fact, I didn't want the fact that Josh, the protagonist, is gay to be the main fact of his life. Yes, he's gay, but his primary issues don't have to do with his sexuality, but with his family relationships and his growing sense of himself as an artist.

Also, I wanted to write a book where the father, the straight son, and the gay son try to figure out ways to get along, instead of having clicheed heterosexual vs homosexual relationships. There's a new world out there, and it needs to be captured in the literature.

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