Books : Oh the Glory of It All
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 979.461053092
EAN: 9780143036913
ISBN: 0143036912
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: April 25, 2006
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Sales Rank: 137916
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Sean’s blond-bombshell mother regularly entertains Black Panthers and movie stars in the family’s marble and glass penthouse. His enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade. The three live happily together "eight-hundred feet in the air above San Francisco; in 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." But when his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend, Sean’s life blows apart. His memoir shows us how he survived, spinning out a "deliriously searing and convincing" portrait of a wicked stepmother (The New York Times Book Review), a meeting with the pope, sexual awakening, and a tour of "the planet’s most interesting reform schools" (Details).
Amazon.com Review:
"A memoir, at its heart, is written in order to figure out who you are," writes Sean Wilsey, and indeed, Oh the Glory of it All is compelling proof of his exhaustive personal quest. It's no surprise that as a kid in the '80s, Wilsey found similarities between his own life and his beloved Lord of the Rings and Star Wars--his journey was fraught with unnerving characters too.
Wilsey's father was a distant, wealthy man who used a helicopter when a moped would do and whose mandates included squeegeeing the stall after every shower. Much of Wilsey's youth was spent as subservient to, or rebelling against this imposing man. But the maternal figures in Wilsey's childhood were no less affecting. His mother, a San Francisco society butterfly turned globe-trotting peace promoter, seemed to behave only in extremes--either trying to convince young Sean to commit suicide with her, or arranging impromptu meetings with the Pope and Mikhail Gorbachev. And Dede, his demon of a stepmother, would have made the Brothers Grimm shiver.
As always with memoirs one must take expansive sections of recalled dialogue with a grain of salt, but Wilsey's short, unflinching sentences keep his outlandish story moving too quickly for much quibbling. In the end, Wilsey says, "It took the unlikely combination of the three of them--mother, father, stepmother--to make me who I am." It's a fairly basic conclusion after 479 pages of turning every stone, but it's also one that renders his story--more than shocking or glorious--human. --Brangien Davis
Average Rating: 
Rating: -
Mostly entertaining, this memoir recounts the strange and chaotic upbringing of Sean Wilsey, son of SF socialite Pat Montandon and SF millionaire Al Wilsey, as he goes from living the high life in SF (literally, in a penthouse apartment in Pacific Heights), to various U.S. reform schools, all the while trying to win the love and attention of his neglecting father. Wilsey paints a nasty portrait of his stepmother, who in real life tried to take legal action against the publisher for defaming her ... Read More
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I really liked this book and it was especially cool reading it as a book club book in San Francisco since some of my club memebers knew various people in the book and we all knew the city locations mentioned. Quick read.
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I came to THE GLORY OF IT ALL via Pat Montandon's slightly over-the-top memoir, WHISPERS FROM GOD (formerly THE HELL OF IT ALL, a take-off on the title of this book). I listened to this book on CD and it was well-performed by the reader.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and dimly remembered Ms. Montandon, who lived and was famous/infamous here from the early 60's to approx. the 1990's. That was why I picked up her memoir. I was unaware of her contentious divorce from Al Wilsey, ... Read More
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Just when you think this memoir thing has played out...Sean Wilsey comes along and jazzes it up several notches. Almost as much fun as actually hurling fruit bombs off the penthouse deck at passing cars (a scene of Wilsey's veritable mispent youth), and as rousing as a song & dance number from Pippin, this book is relentlessly funny/poignant in the way that it takes no prisoners and puts everyone, especially Wilsey, under the psychic microscope. Like an imaginary blend of Salman Rushdie, Philip ... Read More
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Like Sean Wilsey's life, this book is full of ups and downs. The book moves in waves, and at the risk of being too metaphorical, it literally is like the ocean. The chapters crescendo, hitting the reader hard. This book brought forth so many emotions for me. I laughed, I almost cried (like some of the main characters, I was medicated during my reading), I was angered, I was annoyed. The author does not present his life story in order for the reader to judge him or his family/acquaintances. Therefore, ... Read More
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