About the Book
A poignant, funny, and timely memoir that marries the intimacy and the sexual identity themes of Boy Erased with My Life in Middlemarch’s interest in the way literature shapes and influences our lives, written in the authentic Southern voice, deeply incisive wit, and with quirky but erudite observations evocative of John Jeremiah Sullivan's Pulphead.
Mark Scarbrough has been searching for something his entire life. Whether it’s his birth mother, true love, his purpose, or his sexual identity, Mark has been on a constant quest to find out who he really is, with the great Western texts as his steadfast companions. As a boy with his head constantly in a book, desperate to discover new worlds, he can hardly distinguish between their plots and his own reality. The child of strict Texan Evangelicals, Mark is taught by the Bible to fervently believe in the rapture and second coming and is thus moved to spend his teen years as a youth preacher in cowboy boots. At college, he discovers William Blake, who teaches him to fall in love with poems, lyrics...and his roommate Alex. Raised to believe that to be gay was to be a sinner, Mark is driven to the brink of madness and attempts suicide. Hoping to avoid books once and for all, Mark joins the seminary, where he meets his wife, Miranda. Neither the seminary nor the marriage stick, and Mark once again finds himself turning to his books for the sense of belonging he continues to seek....
In the tradition of beloved titles like The End of Your Life Book Club, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and The Year of Reading Dangerously, Bookmarked tells a deeply personal story through the lens of literature. An examination of one man’s complicated, near-obsessive relationship with books, and how they shaped, molded, ruined, and saved him, Bookmarked is about how we listeners stash our secrets between jacket covers and how those secrets ultimately get told in the ways that the books themselves demand.
Review
As I was initially intrigued and drawn into the book based upon its title, I didn’t get the experience that I’d hoped based on that assumption. As I appreciate when people discover books and the impact literature has influenced their lives, I didn’t feel or see how it affected him to the degree as the title might have inferred. The obsession with some of the literature he referenced may have been congruent with his experiences but that was based on choices he made in his life that seemed independent of that.
In spite of this, what I enjoyed reading about this memoir was about him as a person. His story layered with insecurities, obstacles and a lifelong journey to find himself and his own voice is what kept me interested. I feel his obsession with the classics and books as with many readers who look to escape the realities of life seem to what might have been a positive rather than a negative.
I can’t imagine one’s experience being like his. He was adopted, raised by conservative evangelicals, and going through life having conflicting feelings trying to fit into a life where your story was meant to be told differently. It was courageous of his self discovery and embracing who he was meant to be later in life was a testimony in itself. As a consequence, living his best life, finding his authentic self and love wraps up a lifetime of trying.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about his life after finding his place and truly embracing and enjoying what life has to offer. So overall, I wasn’t sold on the concept that it ruined his life, but was pleased to see that today he’s living the best version of it.
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