A mediocre book, but it's not difficult to understand why Burnett wrote it. Instead of buying it, rent Tokyo Pop, a 1988...
Comedian Burnett (This Time Together, 2010, etc.) limns her relationship with her eldest daughter, Carrie Hamilton, who died of cancer at age 38.
A mother can be forgiven for a tender yet poorly written book about a beloved daughter who died too young, but Burnett's prose is uninspired and littered with clichés. In her telling, excitement is always “unbridled,” life is full of experiences that are “magical,” “beautiful” or “terrific,” and people are always “gung-ho,” even on the cancer ward. It would be tempting to dismiss Burnett's recreated dialogue as pure fabrication, except that about half of the book consists of emails from her daughter, which she copied and pasted directly into the text. Missing a narrative arc, the book meanders through various chapters of Hamilton's life: her youthful drug addiction and multiple, ultimately successful stints in rehab; the collapse of her parents' marriage and, later, her own; her wanderlust; her early success as an entertainer. Hamilton led a varied and unconventional life, and her exploits should be richer and more engaging on the page. Unfortunately, they are flattened by Burnett's refusal to analyze: She tells us that her daughter traveled constantly, and where, but she never explains why. Although the book is deeply flawed, its subject, Hamilton, comes across as a warm, vivacious and talented young woman. She acted, wrote and sang, and she was a caring daughter, sister and friend. According to the many glowing letters Burnett received after Hamilton's death, she was loved by all those who came into contact with her.
A mediocre book, but it's not difficult to understand why Burnett wrote it. Instead of buying it, rent Tokyo Pop, a 1988 cult classic starring a young, radiant Hamilton.Pub Date: April 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1476706412
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
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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