Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph over Alienation and Shag Carpeting

by Eric Poole

Overview

"Gut-splittingly funny...a deeply moving account of a boy's attempt to control his world with his own brand of magic." --People magazine, 4 stars.

Tracey Ullman once described Eric Poole as "the best undiscovered writer I ever met." Now the world can enjoy his achingly honest wit and gift for capturing real life characters in this memoir about growing up in the 1970's with an obsessive-compulsive mother and a crush on Endora from Bewitched.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101187784
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/27/2010
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	264 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Eric Poole is the secret love child of Fran Lebowitz and David Sedaris. But oddly taller. A VP of marketing for a major media company and the winner of 30+ advertising awards, Eric was once called "the best undiscovered writer I've ever met" by Tracey Ullman, an accolade he continues to live up to. He resides in Los Angeles with his partner of ten years.

What People are Saying About This

Laurie Notaro

"I loved WHERE'S MY WAND. I wish I had once been a 12-year-old gay boy so that I could have written it. He's got the right mixture of being unforgivably witty, embarrassingly dorky, endearing without overly being sentimental, and clearly isn't afraid of stripping himself emotionally naked for the sake of a bold laugh. It's a runaway charmer, hands down."

Leslie Jordan

It made me jump up and down and holler 'Yummy!', like my grandmother Mary Lucille's red velvet cake. (Leslie Jordan, co-star of Boston Legal and Will & Grace)

Jim Brickman

An absolute must-read book for the outcast in all of us, Where's My Wand is hilarious and heartfelt. I could not put this book down. It's a rare treat.

Simon Doonan

Eric Poole unfurls his shag-carpeted, Match-Game-lovin', 70's childhood with incredible wit and honesty. Light-up a Winston, open a Tab and tuck in!(Simon Doonan, author of Beautiful People)

Editorial Reviews

A quirky, irreverent story of growing up odd in the 1970s, when people still wrote letters, loved shag carpeting and used carbon paper.

Fox Television radio-marketing executive Poole grew up in the Midwest in a family, and among an assortment of characters, destined to end up in a coming-of-age memoir. Some of the more entertaining stories include the chaos of his parents' fighting in 1969; the author's befriending of the sarcastic, armless Stacy (who "exhibit[ed] her stumps to the amazement and awe of the gathered fourth-graders"); his magical obsessions with Bewitched, which included an unhealthy attachment to Endora; and his failed exorcism of another boy in Bible school. From his early childhood, when he escaped into his family's basement to chant magical charms to ward off alienation and chaos, through his teenage years, when the normal teenager panic was amplified by the added bewilderment of his awakening homosexuality, Poole shares an intimate, self-effacing chronicle of a unique young boy and the forces that molded him into the grounded, articulate, charming oddball he is today. The real charm of the book lies in the authenticity of the humor. There is not one forced moment in the book, nor is there a stitch of disingenuous manipulation to get a cheap laugh or manufacture a setup to a joke. Each entertaining tidbit grows from the characters, their lives, their struggles and their unforgivably shameless honesty. This is the story of growing up as the exception, but learning to understand that if you're lucky and have the right mix of crazy people in your life, being the exception can morph into being exceptional.

A witty, observant, deliciously satisfying autobiography.

Kirkus Reviews