Though firsthand, a minor addition to the literature surrounding the Manson cult.
A one-time member of the Manson family delivers a dutiful account of her part in that history of mayhem.
“I had buried my history so well I’d almost forgotten that once I was someone else,” writes Lake—called, in Mansonese, “Snake.” Rattled out of decades of small-f family life, churchgoing, and good deeds—she testified against Manson and her fellow cultists during the notorious Sharon Tate murder trials and was released to a foster family as a minor, thus avoiding imprisonment—by the news that a corpse dog might have located yet more bodies in the haunt of the Manson family, she turns in a memoir that is courageous in spirit but long on self-justification: if society didn’t make her run off and join the cult, then her hippie parents, erstwhile members of the decidedly peaceful Hog Farm commune, certainly didn’t help with their endless permissiveness. The Stockholm syndrome is well in play as Lake describes Manson’s deft use of psychological tricks—some of them picked up by doing time with pimps on Terminal Island—to undermine the egos of his young followers, especially girls. “The first was to use fear and intimidation, but that didn’t always work,” she writes, adding, “the final and most important was making the girl feel fully loved.” Lake goes on to reveal that in her case, as the youngest member of the family, fear was the strongest operative factor, with Manson often threatening her. The author’s portraits of figures such as Tex Watson, Leslie Van Houten, and Susan Atkins will be of interest to Manson completists, although the main outlines are already well-known. Likewise, the author’s account of a bewildered, manipulated Dennis Wilson, of Beach Boys fame, makes it clear that Brian wasn’t the only brother to have borne mental wounds from childhood abuse—again, no real news there.
Though firsthand, a minor addition to the literature surrounding the Manson cult.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-269557-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2017
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
