RaveEsquire\"How McDonell came to understand this brand of masculinity is the subject of his lyrical and self-lacerating new memoir ... It\'s a beautiful story, Irma’s story with her son. And McDonell’s mastery of this story—a child’s story—is something to behold. The book isn’t long—just 244 pages, with plenty of white space on the page. Chapters are a page to a couple of pages long: discreet, contained, and wondrous like a Joseph Cornell box. At first, I found myself slowing down, because it’s the kind of book you can devour in one sitting ... McDonell never said \'I love you\' to his mother while she was alive. He’s saying it now.\
