A compulsive telling of what it is like to have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) combined with the vocal and muscular tics that are characteristic of Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological disorder that runs in families. Wilensky was eight when she first developed the involuntary head and body jerks that would plague her from then on. Not long after, she found that counting up to 60 or repeating actions in multiples of six had an anxiety-relieving effect. The OCD symptoms grew to compulsions to write the alphabet repeatedly, make lists of little words from big words, to avoid (actually hate) odd numbers, to get up or move only at even times, to an ever-expanding repertoire of rites and rituals, most of which she tried to hide (now, in revealing all, the writing itself becomes excessive, elaborate, self-preoccupied). The family was convinced her problem was “psychological,” and her father in particular was devastating in his criticism. (Readers will clue in early to the fact that he actually had OCD himself—of the excessive tidy-fit variety.) Because she was very bright, the endless hours in obedience to Tourette’s and OCD didn—t prevent her achieving well enough to go from prep school to Vassar to Columbia’s graduate program in creative writing. Along the way, she managed to pass from fear and loathing at being touched to love and marriage. She was in her mid-20s when she realized she had OCD and got a referral from the family doctor. This led to the full diagnosis of Tourette’s with OCD and medication—haloperidol for tics and Prozac and behavioral therapy for OCD. The new knowledge also led to Dad’s diagnosis and treatment. That the diagnosis should come so late and that an intelligent family and friends should be so uninformed suggests the need for books like Wilensky’s. That it has helped the author in her own journey to self-revelation is abundantly clear.
Pub Date: Aug. 18, 1999
ISBN: 0-7679-0185-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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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