Bettyville
A Memoir

It goes like this, again and again, in endless towns. There’s a boy, somewhere, a somewhere that’s never New York. He doesn’t know he is not unusual, because there’s no one to tell him; he won’t find that out, and may never come to fully believe it, until he’s left one of those endless towns and com......more

I read BETTYVILLE by George Hodgman in a weekend, ignoring my family to finish it, basically in a day. The memoir is riveting, beautiful, brave, honest, compelling, heart breaking, heart opening, funny and true. It is about family, where we come from, how we don't let those closest to us know us for......more

Beautifully assembled and tenderly sad memoir that focuses in on George's relationship with his ailing mother, his late father and the world he came from (small-town Missouri) in relation to the world he inhabited as an urban adult who works in the high-stress fields of magazine and book publishing......more

Despite the praise, Bettyville by George Hodgman is not particularly illuminating, it does not have a gratifying end and it is mostly a compendium of the same thoughts and scenes, slightly tweaked, repeated ad nauseum. While Bettyville certainly had the potential to be poignant and illuminating, “go......more

4.5, rounded up. Knowing that the author committed suicide 6 months ago necessarily colored how I read this book, and perhaps I therefore forgave a lot of stuff that would have otherwise made me a bit more critical (some needless repetition; stereotypical self-loathing gay and addiction/recovery trop......more