No abusive childhood, no paying of old scores, no juicy gossip, and very little revelation of anyone but the deeply decent...
A warmly old-fashioned reminiscence from the dean of the American regional mystery.
Blessed are those who expect little, said Hillerman’s mother; they are seldom disappointed. But the reason her son is seldom disappointed, as he’s at pains to point out, is that undeserved good things keep happening to him. His Oklahoma mom, whom he calls “the hero of this book,” allows him to enlist in the infantry even though he’s entitled to an exemption as the last son of a farm wife widowed the day after Pearl Harbor. He survives WWII with a Bronze Star; some of his friends deserved far more. He climbs the journalistic ladder in Santa Fe, then enjoys teaching and administrative jobs at the University of New Mexico for 15 years before leaving to become a full-time novelist. When it turns out that he and his wife Marie can have only one child, they’re able to adopt five more. His Navajo mystery A Thief of Time, published 20 years after an agent advised him to “get rid of the Indian stuff,” becomes a breakout bestseller for reasons he still can’t fathom. Hillerman’s self-made-success story does have its limitations. He’s weak on dates, selective on inclusions (surprisingly little on his childhood, though a great deal on his war service; virtually nothing on the 1980s or the wife he obviously adores, but some shrewd analysis of his own fiction, some of it tucked into an Addendum), and incapable, for better or worse, of saying an unkind word about anybody, even corporate bodies, without changing their names (though his account of trying to work the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee series for TV is priceless).
No abusive childhood, no paying of old scores, no juicy gossip, and very little revelation of anyone but the deeply decent author, who’s constantly interrupting his chatty stream of anecdotes to say one more nice thing about somebody else.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-019445-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
