As much about life in a foreign clime as about motherhood.
Leary, wife of comedian Denis, recalls with rueful humor the weekend in London that turned into a five-month stay when their son was born prematurely.
Leary is one of those rare chroniclers of motherhood able to find the middle ground between sentimentality and science as she records both her joys as well as fears—she was sure the baby would stop breathing if she left his room. Disarmingly frank about her naïveté, she is also touchingly appreciative of the care she received at University College Hospital, which has the best neonatology unit in London. In March 1990, Leary’s husband was largely unknown in the US, but the BBC had asked him to appear on a TV show in London—all expenses paid. Ann, 26 weeks pregnant, also came along, but the next day, while out walking, her waters broke and she was rushed to hospital. There she was examined and put to bed, but her son Jack was born a week later. Ann had packed only for a weekend, the couple didn’t have much money, but the hospital staff, her family, and the new friends she made, all rallied around to help. As she recalls those difficult months, her fears that Jack might not survive, and the loneliness (Denis had to go back to work in the US), she admits to crying a great deal. But she was impressed with the medical care she received, the kindness of the people, and the continued stiff-upper-lip attitude, though she was shocked when her fellow patients, waiting to give birth, smoked and drank caffeine. Jack was eventually strong enough to leave the hospital, but they couldn’t fly home until his lungs were more mature, which meant finding an apartment—and taking care of Jack on her own. Now, 14 years later, she confesses to having a lingering scar from the experience, “a heart wrenching awareness of the prodigious wonder of Jack’s existence.”
As much about life in a foreign clime as about motherhood.Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-052723-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
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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