By scrolling down to the bottom of this page. you will find a flip book of The Wrong Side of the Room. If you click on the arrows on either side of the book cover, you will be able to flip through the first few pages of the book.
Where to Buy this Show-Business Autobiography
The Wrong Side of the Room was published on October 26, 2018.
The book is available from the
following distributors:
BookShop (fastest way to get the paperback)
Amazon
Kindle
Audbile (for the audiobook)
Barnes and Noble
Books-A-Million
AppleBooks
Nook
Ingram
Baker & Taylor
BookaZine
Keywords
Musical Theater
Broadway Theater
Show-business Autobiography
Dance
Classical Music
Opera
Celebrity Gossip
LGBTQ
Coming Out
Young Adult
Ageism
Sicilian-American
Read Reviews for The Wrong Side of the Room here.
The Wrong Side of the Room is the Bronze Medal Winner of the Readers’ Favorite Book Competition. Formal announcement made October 2019.
The Wrong Side of the Room is featured in
the November 15, 2018, issue of
Kirkus Reviews, entitled
The Best Books of 2018.
Overview
The Wrong Side of the Room: A Life in Music Theater is a richly detailed autobiography about coming of age, coming out, and becoming a respected artist. This intimate, funny, and dramatically compelling show-business autobiography traces Norman Mathews’s life-long quest to come to terms with his sexuality, find his place in the professional theater, and develop a meaningful loving relationship. Born into a colorful Sicilian-American family in the Scandinavian-dominated, conservative town of Rockford, Illinois, Mathews’s remarkable journey takes him from his college years in Denver to a multilayered life among show-business elite in New York City and Europe. A late starter on the path to his artistic and personal goals, the author has struggled against ageism from his early twenties and continues his fight for a recognized place as a composer, playwright, and author.
Description
Norman Mathews was born in the wrong town, the wrong era, and with the wrong name. What’s a boy to do? He conjured up a more enticing, imaginary world to better navigate the perils of childhood. Dreams of a life in the theater and of passionate romance were stymied by lack of self-assurance. Psychological abuse by a priest led to absurdly comic psychotherapy over his sexuality. At age twenty, a failed suicide nearly shattered a promising future. From the ashes of this calamity rose a staggering resolve to build a rewarding and meaningful life. Byzantine twists paved the way to a career as an editor and eventually a life as a Broadway dancer. As a performer, he worked with Barbra Streisand, Dorothy Lamour, and Gene Kelly. After an untimely injury, he reinvented himself as a pianist, composer, and playwright, for which he created award-winning works for top Broadway and concert-stage performers.
His passionate and inspirational autobiography is steeped in dark humor, hilarious celebrity gossip, and backstage intrigue. It is a rare book that can intimately describe a self-destructive trajectory, recount the grisly murder of a former roommate, provide an inside look at the embezzlement of a famed Broadway producer, detail an ugly never-reported scene involving Michael Bennett, and give a behind-the-scenes look at the birth of new musicals and operas. He brings his colorful Sicilian-American family, his triumphs and heartbreaks, and his mine-strewn path to fulfilling love vividly to life. This riveting drama is a paean to all late-bloomers, proof that no matter how many wrong cards you are dealt, it’s possible, with hope and tenacity, to come up with a winning hand.