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SECOND ACT

Name: SECOND ACT
Author: Barbara Barrie
ISBN: 0-684-83587-8

LIFE AFTER COLOSTOMY AND OTHER ADVENTURES

by Barbara Barrie ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 1997

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That even colostomies have their humorous aspect is demonstrated in this spirited account by a Tony- and Oscar- nominated actress with a remarkable zest for life. In April 1994, when Barrie was in her early 60s, she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Her story of what followed is not a simple one, for unfortunately all did not go well. Having been told that the surgery would leave her with an opening, or stoma, on her abdomen that would resemble a rosebud, she found to her horror and considerable pain that her bowel protruded some three inches and looked, in her words, exactly like ``a pink penis coming out of a donut.'' Ten months after her first surgery at Columbia Presbyterian, another surgeon at New York Hospital performed a second, successful colostomy. During this period, in which Barrie also underwent chemotherapy and radiation, she rehearsed and appeared in a play and on several television shows (she's Brooke Shields's grandmother on Suddenly Susan), while continuing to entertain friends, attend the theater, play tennis, and spend weekends with her husband on Fire Island. Throughout, she insisted on her privacy, and few people in her business or personal life knew what she was going through. Then, a humiliating accident on a Manhattan bus inspired Barrie to go public with her story. She bares her soul and her body with considerable panache. Even the details of how to care for a colostomy and perform the necessary daily irrigation are told with frankness and good humor. Learning about colostomies from a woman who has clearly continued to live a full and active life should comfort those facing similar surgery. The broader lesson to be learned from Barrie's experience, however, is the danger of denial. For years she ignored her symptoms, when to have taken early action might well have made this a very different story. A gutsy woman's tale of survival. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Sept. 5, 1997

ISBN: 0-684-83587-8

Page Count: 247

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL NONFICTION

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.