It’s a vivid tale, though not always an easy one. Oseland is just old enough to have felt the sexual unshackling that presaged the AIDS decades, and has lived to tell us his truth, which is anything but neurotic.
Former Saveur editor-in-chief and Top Chef Masters judge James Oseland writes this vibrant coming-of-age memoir in an instantly lovable voice, part surly teenager and part sweetly naive dreamer ... Oseland tells this story with a poignant style all his own.
Affecting, if uneven ... [Oseland] doesn’t impose [his] knowledge on his younger self. The effect is like a compression of narrative vision, a collapsing of the distance between then and nowThe issue is that, for all the value of proximity, Jimmy Neurosis lacks a certain contemplative voice — the sense of reflection on which a memoir relies. It’s not a deal-breaker because much of what Oseland reveals is moving, but the book could have benefited from a little more.
