Funny, moving and insightful.
In his debut memoir, Finch relates how the diagnosis of his autism-spectrum condition came as a relief because it helped explain his obsessive habits, extreme social unease and egocentricity.
What had before been understood as character flaws were instead traits and tendencies that were hardwired in his neurological makeup. Moreover, Finch came to understand that Asperger-related tendencies—e.g., a near-complete lack of empathy and the inability to adjust to changing schedules—were at the root of his strained relationship with his wife and his frustrations as a parent of two young children. “Receiving such a diagnosis as an adult might seem shocking and unsettling,” he writes. “It wasn’t. Eye-opening, yes. Life-changing, yes. But not upsetting in the least…the diagnosis ultimately changed my life for the better.” With an endearing and sometimes manic energy, Finch sought to better understand the needs of his family and plot how he could modify his behaviors in order to regain intimacy with them. To help him succeed, the author created the Journal of Best Practices, a hodgepodge collection of journal entries and random scraps of paper that record moments of personal insight such as “Parties are supposed to be fun” and “Laundry: Better to fold and put away than to take only what you need from the dryer.” With an alternately comical and starkly painful voice, Finch uses these and other moments of epiphany to explore the inroads of emotional intimacy.
Funny, moving and insightful.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4391-8971-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
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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