Public Apology
In Which a Man Grapples With a Lifetime of Regret, One Incident at a Time
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In this series of hilarious confessions by "New Jersey's answer to Nick Hornby," learn how apologizing and coming to terms with past embarrassments can lead to compassion and maturity (Jonathan Mahler).
Dave Bry is sorry. Very sorry.
He's sorry to Wendy Metzger for singing the last verse of "Stairway to Heaven" into her ear while slow dancing in junior high school. He's sorry to Judy and Michael Gailhouse for letting their children watch The Amityville Horror when he babysat them. And he's sorry--especially, truly--that he didn't hear his cancer-ridden father call out for help one fateful afternoon.
Things are different now. Dave's become a dad, too, and he's discovered a new compassion for the complicated man who raised him. And maybe if his 17-year-old self could meet his current self, he'd think twice before throwing beer cans on Jon Bon Jovi's lawn. Dave's apologies are at turns hysterically funny and profoundly moving, ultimately adding up to a deeply human, poignant and likable portrait of a man trying to come to grips with his past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Compiled from his highly popular "Public Apology" column, Bry's satirical "letters" feature tongue-in-cheek apologies to a wide range of people from junior high, high school, and college, to New York City and adulthood. But these acts of contrition never make the reader really belly-laugh. Some of his misadventures in grade school stem from the hormonal silliness of adolescence and puberty terrifying young charges with a horror film, stealing a six-pack of beer, throwing empty cans on Jon Bon Jovi's lawn. Bry's confessions, although charged with the immediacy of nostalgic reflection, lack the manic juice of David Sedaris, or Dave Berry's candor. In the segments devoted to New York and adulthood, Bry's voice feels more at home. He slips into helter-skelter observations of his nutty episodes of "acting out," where situations or people call for a somewhat different decorum. Other than the unusually candid moments involving his ailing father and family, Bry's laugh fest does not translate from column to tome with humor or wit fully intact.
