The Late Bloomer, Ken Baker
The Late Bloomer, Ken Baker
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The Late Bloomer
A Memoir of My Body

Author: Ken Baker

Narrator: Ken Baker

Unabridged: 9 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 09/27/2016

Synopsis

Soon to be a feature film, The Late Bloomer is the revealing, harrowing and often funny memoir of a celebrity journalist and former hotshot hockey player who discovers that he has been biochemically infused with a female hormone.

On the surface, Ken Baker seemed a model man. He was a nationally ranked hockey goalie; a Hollywood correspondent for People; a guest-lister at celebrity parties; and girls came on to him. Inside, though, he didn't feel like the man he was supposed to be.

Although attracted to women, Ken had little sex drive and thus even less of a sex life. To his anguish, he repeatedly found himself unable to perform sexually. And, regardless of strenuous workouts, his body struggled to build muscle, earning him the nickname "Pear" from his macho teammates. Physically, matters turned bizarre when he discovered that he was lactating.

The testosterone-driven culture in which Ken grew up made it agonizingly difficult for him to seek help. But in time he discovered something that lifted years of pain, frustration, and confusion: a brain tumor was causing his body to be flooded with massive amounts of a female hormone, which was disabling his masculinity.

Five hours of surgery accomplished what years of therapy, rumination, and denial could not -- and allowed Ken Baker to finally feel -- and function -- like a man.

Now Ken's story comes to the screen in the feature film, The Late Bloomer, starring Academy Award-winner J.K. Simmons and Jane Lynch.

About The Author

Ken Baker is an award-winning author and journalist currently serving as Senior Correspondent for E! News and E! Online. He lives in the Los Angeles with his family.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Cryselle on November 07, 2009

Liking or disliking doesn't seem to apply here: this is tragic, yet hopeful. Being a medical professional, though, my inner voice kept screaming "Tell a doctor! Your chest isn't supposed to do that!" I suppose it's part and parcel of showing no weakness and the anti-medical bias shown by his father......more

Goodreads review by Josh on August 27, 2012

Interesting book albeit a bit crude at time. A very compelling story showcasing the profound influences our biological makeup has on our personalities. Should be considered a must read for anyone still subscribing to the 70's hippie notion of "boys and girls are all created equal - its society that......more

Goodreads review by Karissa on April 05, 2017

"Surgery healed my body; writing will heal my soul." This book is not a light-hearted wacky hi jinks tale. It is exactly as the author states in the forward, its his way to exorcise his demons from a life of familial and health issues. Worth the semi heavy read to get a glimpse into the life of someo......more

Goodreads review by Mary on August 22, 2019

I wanted to read this book because I, too, had a pituitary adenoma, and I was very curious about how a male would experience it. Mine was not anywhere as severe as his, not only because it was diagnosed in less than a year, but because the prolactin is a female hormone, so it never affected me in a......more

Goodreads review by James on May 06, 2022

I read this not long after finding out I’ve also had a prolactinoma from a young age. While my experience of life was very different from the author’s, and my personality EXTREMELY different, it made for an informative read. Wish he’s focused more on figuring himself out after treatment, since that wa......more

Quotes

"In an era when Viagra pills and testosterone gel have made male sexuality - indeed manhood itself - look like a mere commodity to be purchased, Ken Baker's The Late Bloomer is a bracingly honest account of his own far more difficult and fascinating journey to manhood. He takes a reader with him through a labyrinth of medical mystery, emotional distress, and startling humor. Raucous at one moment, tender at the next, The Late Bloomer is always a triumph of candor and a vital inquiry into the essence of male identity." --Samuel G. Freedman, Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction

"In a landscape filled with memoirs exploring the vast array of painful traumas that can shape an individual's development into personhood, here is a story that examines - with touching and unflinching honesty and humor, and zero self-pity - the  story of a young man's coming of age in uniquely painful and difficult circumstances. On the surface, Baker's story concerns his many-years-long ordeal of living with an undiagnosed tumor that totally disrupted his hormonal makeup. But really, Baker's book is about the extraordinary toll of shame and secret keeping. Underneath the gripping story of a young man's coming of age in blue collar, macho-driven upstate New York hockey culture, we have a story that explores the definition of what it is to be male, written by a young man who knows, as few of us ever will, the experience of inhabiting a body at war with itself. Baker has travelled to the most mysterious place - his own own dark inner self - and come back to tell us about the voyage, where the discovery was nothing less than his own manhood." --Joyce Maynard, author of At Home in the World

"Baker has crafted a penetrating, even haunting look at what it means to be a man and what it should mean. Enlivened by a stunningly brilliant chronicle of a tragically unhappy childhood in the family from hell with what must have been the saddest father in upper New York, Baker's book is an object lesson in how to survive a growing up that would have killed a lesser man, and more than that, a story of not just survival, but triumph. Must reading for men, but especiallyfor parents so they will know what not to do with their kids, especially with boy children." --Ben Stein

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