A brutally honest book that captures the journey of four people too young to face the challenges they nevertheless had to...
In alternating monologues, four siblings tell their story of love, loss, redemption and reconciliation.
In 1983, the Welch children—19-year-old Amanda, 16-year-old Liz, 14-year-old Dan and eight-year-old Diana—were living happy, sheltered lives in a New York City suburb. But this idyllic existence was soon shattered by the death in a car accident of their businessman father, leaving them not only grief-stricken but saddled with debt. Their mother, an actress in soap operas, tried to hold things together but was soon diagnosed with cancer and died three years later after a long, agonizing battle with the disease. Left on their own, the Welch children took very different paths of self-discovery and struggled to maintain the often frayed bonds among them. Amanda escaped to a bohemian life as an NYU student; Liz traveled the world; Dan became lost, first as a stoned-out slacker and then as a mean drunk. Diana was left in the custody of a family whose mother subjected her to endless psychological abuse, while the other siblings tried to convince themselves she was fine. “To be honest, I never thought much about Diana,” writes Dan. “I just assumed she was happy and well. I don’t think I could have handled imagining it any other way.” Diana felt abandoned and, as children do, blamed herself for her feelings. The four eventually reunited, but it was through events they responded to rather than created. Each sibling speaks in his or her own words, as they describe their thoughts and actions as the events unfolded. It’s a love-filled but often fraught dialogue, and the reader is a privileged silent witness to their testimony.
A brutally honest book that captures the journey of four people too young to face the challenges they nevertheless had to face.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-307-39604-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 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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