For those in the Central New York area, I am doing a reading this week at Cafè Vinci in Rome, which is owned by my childhood friend Bill Vinci. The event is at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 27.

Also, I wanted to share a couple recent reviews for Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood. One is from Manhattan Book Review, and blogger John Avery wrote another one. Here’s the full review.

I really like how the reviewer frames the story:

“A story this tied to physical vulnerability, sexuality, and shame during the exact years when those things feel most exposed and high-stakes—putting that on the page for anyone to read takes a kind of nerve that the book itself seems to be arguing is its own form of manhood. The writing doesn’t feel like it’s performing courage; it feels like it’s actually being courageous, which is a different thing entirely.

If you’ve ever felt like your body, your timeline, or your circumstances put you at odds with the version of adulthood everyone else seemed to be handed automatically, this memoir is going to speak to something you probably haven’t seen articulated quite this directly before. It’s not a book about overcoming a diagnosis in the triumphant, feel-good sense. It’s a book about redefining what it means to become a man when the body refuses to follow the script — and by the end, that redefinition feels like the real victory.”

And I really liked an animation that was included in one of the social posts for the review.