Resonant reflections from a skilled literary artist.
A novelist muses on maturing, seeking, traveling, and other themes in this collection of fiction and nonfiction.
Rolnick (Cocoon of Cancer, 2016, etc.) offers 23 essays and stories she calls “tattles,” in which she says she has “blurred the lines of nonfiction and fiction, truth and imagination.” The pieces vary in length from a couple of pages to more than 40, and they’re organized in thematic sections—“Seeking,” “Childhood,” “Maturing,” “A-Musings,” and “Travels.” Each piece is preceded by an italicized summary of its contents. The essays range from “Foundations,” a riff on the importance—and symbolic significance—of finding a well-fitting bra, to “Joy,” Rolnick’s embrace of the titular emotion that she says “creates the wisdom and laughter that will sustain me for another half century.” Fictional imaginings include “Lace,” in which a divorcée, Rose, seeks healing on her trip to a remote Caribbean island; “Mad Matter,” in which Sarah, a cancer survivor, meets a perceptive child and an attractive, mourning fireman; and “New Order,” about an orphaned teenager’s move to her estranged uncle’s home in Florida. The challenges of aging figure prominently in two stories: “Knock, Knock” shares the tale of Selma, who’s dealing with the dementia of her longtime husband, whose thoughts appear in italicized segments throughout the narrative, and “Country Villa,” about a woman visiting her father, Morton, in a nursing home. As often occurs with these types of compilations, the “tattles” collected here are a mixed bag. The most memorable entries are those that skew toward fiction; “Lace” is a particularly lovely example of Rolnick’s mastery at conjuring images of such things as handmade lace and deep-sea diving, which highlight the allure of travel. The essays, while engaging, tend to tread more familiar ground, such as post-divorce dating, and it’s occasionally challenging to keep track of the author’s autobiographical details. Overall, however, Rolnick offers many observational gems to enjoy.
Resonant reflections from a skilled literary artist.Pub Date: June 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9845119-5-2
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Sedro Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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