LITERATURE

Navel Gazing: True Tales of Bodies, Mostly Mine (But Also My Mom's Which I Know Sounds Weird)

by Michael Ian Black
Gallery. Jan. 2016. 208p. ISBN 9781476748825. $24.99; ebk. ISBN 9781476748849. MEMOIR
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Stand-up comedian Black has taken on two very serious subjects—the deterioration of his mother's body as well as his own—and tried to make them funny. He succeeds on occasion, and the book is filled with many touching moments, but the jokiness becomes tiresome. About 50 pages in, it is easy to anticipate the wisecracks, and that results more in eye rolls than belly laughs. The quick sequence of illnesses afflicting his mother are truly terrifying—cancer, and the recurrence of cancer, multiple hernias—yet the focus is on his own more mundane problems—an expanding waistline, a receding hairline, and so on. In the end this is a superficial account that engages in perhaps too much navel gazing.
VERDICT Fans of Black (VH1 series I Love the…; The State) will of course want to seek this one out. Most others need not bother.
Reviewed by Staff , Jan 28, 2016
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