Synopses & Reviews
"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.
Review
"Fragrant as it is of Love's Baby Soft perfume and hormones, Poole's memoir of growing up gay and Baptist in the '70s would be worth reading if it were just gut-splittingly funny (he describes himself as the kind of boy who would only crawl beneath a car "to retrieve a Cher album that had rolled under it"). But Wand is also a deeply moving account of a boy's attempt to control his world with his own brand of magic. That world includes his sometimes terrifying family (his OCD mother makes him rake the shag carpet every night), an armless best friend and a golden boy Poole hoped to anoint with - well, Poole kind of thought it was the spirit of Jesus. It's Poole's mother, though, who is the standout character. Annihilating and loving by turns, she makes Sophie Portnoy look like June Cleaver, yet Poole finds her humor and humanity. We should all have such tenderness toward our parents."
-Judith Newman, People Magazine (four stars)
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.