Everything Is Wrong with Me

January 11, 2010
Blogger Mulgrew, an Irish Catholic son of working-class South Philly, grew up in the early 1980s. In his irreverent, self-deprecating, but frequently funny first book, based on his blog, he revisits his childhood and adolescence. Following in the footsteps of his storytelling father, who hung out with other guys in dive bars, the author encountered (and makes somewhat cursory use of) characters like the local kleptomaniac, a neighbor’s teenaged uncle, who expanded on lessons in hustling previously laid down by a numbers-running grandfather, and the friend who launched further escapades in both entrepreneurship and juvenile pyromania. Mulgrew doesn’t dwell sentimentally on his parents’ rocky relationship, and in comparison to the seemingly endless run of adventures in ersatz jock-and-studhood, there’s relatively little about his mother or his siblings. Instead, the book takes readers deep into a traditional, working-class social world where sports, Jackass
-type pranks, and loyalty reigned. True to the lad-lit form and content, the narrative is often downright crude, with a Maxim
-article tone.

December 15, 2009
Blogger and"Internet quasi-celebrity" Mulgrew delivers a bumptious memoir celebrating his wildly dysfunctional—but fun—childhood as a nerdy kid in a tough Philadelphia neighborhood.

The author is the son of a macho, chain-smoking laborer who declined to stop partying even after suffering a broken neck from an ill-advised late-night dive into shallow water in one memorable anecdote. Mulgrew's world was characterized by bookies, casual violence and rampant alcoholism, but his tone is light, even celebratory, as he lovingly details the outrageous personalities of the larger-than-life characters who populated his gritty neighborhood. The author failed to excel at such locally exalted vocations as athletics or hell-raising, so he threw himself into more quiet pursuits like selling illegal fireworks and hustling at video-hockey tournaments. Mulgrew documents his struggles with Catholicism, Little League, attracting girls and maintaining respect in an entertainingly hapless fashion, but the narrative fails to cohere as a fully dimensional portrait or offer much insight into the social and family dynamics that engendered such goofy behavior. Ultimately it becomes just one thing after another—random fights, drinking binges, mysterious stab wounds, trips to jail. One comic set piece stands out: a Scotch bonnet pepper–eating tournament that leaves its participants writhing in agony, leaking mucous and begging for water and ice cream. Mulgrew includes many embarrassing family photos to buttress his remembrances, and the affection he feels toward his wayward subjects is palpable. However, the author's reflexively snarky, self-deprecating voice—typical of Internet quasi-celebrity bloggers—becomes tiresome over the course of the book.

Fitfully funny, long on snark, short on substance.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 21, 2010
While Mulgrew's title is somewhat deceptive, it sets the tone perfectly for this ironic representation of a childhood in blue-collar South Philly. With high-spirited exaggeration, blogger Mulgrew portrays his youth as a colorful blend of family dysfunctionality and loose neighborhood mores. Drunkenness, divorce, pugilism, gambling, and thievery all play an integral part in Mulgrew's development. Nevertheless, Mulgrew's happy childhood leads to (relatively) normal, functional adulthood. Augusten Burroughs fans will enjoy such wry male humor.-Lynne C. Maxwell, Villanova Univ. Sch. of Law Lib., PA

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2010
Mulgrews loose collection of 1980s and 90s childhood anecdotes and mining of familial dysfunction (designed to throw my family under the bus so that I can buy a high-def TV and force them to cut off contact with me for the rest of my life) clearly subscribes to the Sedaris school of memoir writing. The stories range from his youthful coming to terms with the inadequacy of his penis to an ode to late-night drunken hooker spotting, but the most memorable character turns out to be his hard-drinking, quasi-criminal father. Mostly, though, the book functions as a collection of chapter-length bar yarnsthe kind that come out when only the hardiest of livers are leftwith little attention paid to continuity or organization and a lot to nailing self-deprecatory zingers, which come in two flavors: booze (too much) and sex (not enough). Mulgrew, a popular blogger, is a tremendously entertaining and affable writer as long as youre not expecting anything revelatory and dont mind wallowing with him in his shamelessly, cheerfully puerile tendencies.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)