A book of humor and heart and a vision of life lived fully, Savage paints a picture of an ideal home for his and his...
Savage’s memoir of his experience with adoption reveals an acid tongue and a boundless heart, a savvy blending of social commentary and self-deprecating humor, with an ending so sentimental that, in comparison to the beatific vision of Daddies Dan and Terry, June and Ward Cleaver would look like Al and Peg Bundy.
Known for his trenchant wit and outspoken attitude in his nationally syndicated sex advice column, Savage is the queer incarnation of Dorothy Parker and Dr. Ruth, with a little Dr. Laura Schlesinger thrown in for good measure. In The Kid, which he confesses he wrote primarily for the scads of money the publishers threw at him, his indefatigable tirades against homophobia and heterosexism are played off to delightful effect against the story of adopting baby Daryl Jude. Savage details the long and arduous adoption process that he and his boyfriend endured: the seminars with the adoption agency; the agony of waiting to be picked by a birth mother; the fears that she would change her mind and keep the baby; and the burgeoning relationship with both the birth mother and the baby’s biological father, who they thought would never appear. Along the way, Savage revels in his rejection of the sanitized and homogenized model of the innocuous homosexual and blatantly exposes all of his dirty laundry, from bondage to drugs, from messy housekeeping to strained relationships with some family members. He discloses this litany of character flaws because he wants to underscore the fact that imperfect people—even if they're gay—can be good parents.
A book of humor and heart and a vision of life lived fully, Savage paints a picture of an ideal home for his and his boyfriend’s child in its blemished humanity and right-on queerness; it’s a book that can’t be put down for the same reasons.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 1999
ISBN: 0-525-94525-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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