How Not To Be a Boy
Ratings18
Average rating4.6
"Rules For Being A Man: Don't Cry Love Sport Play Rough Drink Beer Don't Talk About Feelings But Robert Webb has been wondering for some time now: are those rules actually any use? To anyone? Looking back over his life, from schoolboy crushes (on girls and boys) to discovering the power of making people laugh (in the Cambridge Footlights with David Mitchell), and from losing his beloved mother to becoming a husband and father, Robert Webb considers the absurd expectations boys and men have thrust upon them at every stage of life. Hilarious and heart-breaking, How Not To Be a Boy explores the relationships that made Robert who he is as a man, the lessons we learn as sons and daughters, and the understanding that sometimes you aren't the Luke Skywalker of your life - you're actually Darth Vader." -- provided by publisher.
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Caveat that I love Robert Webb and have watched hours and hours of him and David Mitchell, so perhaps I had an easier time reading this entire book in his Peep Show monologue tone - but this felt to me like a brilliant, vital, moving memoir.
This was a throughly enjoyable read! Sometimes rather self indulgent in tone, nevertheless Robert Webb delivers a very raw and honest expose of his early years struggling with his masculinity and sexuality. His childhood was a difficult one to say the least and this leads to confusing adolescence which in turn makes his adult life far from simplistic. His observations around masculinity and gender were deeply intriguing to me and while some of his explanations seemed rather simplistic or idealistic or overtly cynical, I throughly invested in his sentiment. I love that he is looking to re address and acknowledge the way in which masculinity and gender expectation / patriarchy or as he refers to it ‘The Trick' is letting down not just women but men. The things he discusses in this book are things I've mulled over many times myself but he can articulate them much more beautifully than me. I loved his openness about his past memories and his past mistakes. Overall an autobiography yes. But indefinitely much more more than that. I highly recommend this to any kind of reader. This is a book that will enrich anybody's mindset around gender just a little bit more. And it will definitely make you laugh at times and cry at others. So go and enjoy it! Because I can assure you I definitely did !!!
I loved it. I hated how much I loved it. I really struggled with this book - and yes before you ask that IS because I too am a product of ‘The Trick' (when you know you know).
On my quest to become a better man, I feel really lucky to have stumbled on this, which seemed to say to me ‘it's okay mate, I get it' the whole time (even when I was denying the similarities and getting angry at Webb himself).
It was also intensely powerful for me to read someone sharing their failures, and their mistakes so openly and (would you believe) in an incredibly non-self-loathing way. As someone who sits very deeply into the self-loathe, this was reassuring of the idea that equanimity does in fact exist, mistakes that are choking me in the present will free me in the future.
Recommended by: Ryan McMurray (thanks)
Peace
