Strong writing barely illuminates the murky narrative.
A British-American journalist wrestles with his parents’ demons, taking him back to Cold War–era Prague.
Laurence’s memoir chronicles the period during which he and his family lived in Prague, the late 1950s. His father was serving as an officer in the British Foreign Office, and his glamorous mother had an affair with a Czech playboy and impresario who was also collaborating with the Communist police. During this time, the author’s sister, Kate—she was eight when they arrived in 1957, he was seven—developed anorexia and began a dangerous see-sawing cycle of weight loss that ruined her health and caused her untimely death in 2000. Laurence chases, but never adequately answers, the question, what really happened to Kate in Prague? The “social agent” of the title, and fulcrum of the story, was an attractive man the family met in Prague—Jirí Mucha, who had escaped the German invasion of Czechoslovakia during the war, aided the British, spent time in prison after the Soviets took Czechoslovakia and, according to files the author recently found, spied for the Communist state in order to maintain his fabulous lifestyle. This included Mucha’s accomplished wife, Geraldine, whom the author was able to visit in Prague when she was nearly 90; numerous mistresses (orgies were hinted at, involving teenaged girls); and professional seductions, such as the British attaché’s wife, Mrs. Laurence. The author hints at many dark secrets that are left unexplored, such as the deep resentment he feels toward his mother—revealed in one shocking confrontation between them as the father lay dying—and the espionage angle serves as a pretense to investigate a much deeper family wound.
Strong writing barely illuminates the murky narrative.Pub Date: March 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-56663-845-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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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