An inspiring story for young people who may be facing similar problems, rendered in charming, self-deprecating humor.
A witty memoir about living with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Improv comedian Sher (Kissing Snowflakes, 2007) was like many other Jewish kids growing up in the suburbs of New York City, until her father died when she was ten. The traumatic event quickly triggered early signs of OCD. At first it manifested in counting steps and kissing and hugging photographs of her dead father, but it soon evolved into collecting sharp objects from the street that might have otherwise blown holes in car tires resulting in horrible injury or death. If she didn't collect these items, Sher writes, she would have felt responsible if something bad happened as a result. The weight of that guilt drove a need for relief. Praying, or what her mother euphemistically called Abby's “quiet time,” mollified her symptoms for a while. Sitting alone in her closet, Sher would pray 25, even 50 times that everyone who was sick would be healed, and to affirm with God that her father and mother would be her best friends forever. Eventually her “quiet time” stretched into hours, which cut into a burgeoning career as a member of the famed Second City improv troupe in Chicago, as well as her love life. When prayer couldn’t stop her feelings of chaos, the author fell into alcoholism, anorexia and self-mutilation. Though there are reasons to doubt parts of the author’s recollections—especially as she gets older and more accountable for herself—she is no less a talented, engaging writer.
An inspiring story for young people who may be facing similar problems, rendered in charming, self-deprecating humor.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4165-8945-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2009
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
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