Though earnestly researched, the narrative feels disjointed, and the book is never quite as engrossing as the potential for...
An investigation of the world of death fraud.
The fantasy of faking one’s death or simply disappearing has sparked writers’ imaginations for centuries, from Shakespeare to Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn to the creators of TV shows such as Mad Men. Surprisingly, however, there hasn’t been much written on the actual nuts and bolts of planning such an event. Given the demands of our present era, Greenwood (Creative Writing/Columbia Univ.) believes the subject is more compelling now than ever. “Today disappearing seems virtually impossible,” she writes. “This, I think, is what accounts for our renewed fascination with it. We are burdened with our search histories and purchase histories and data stats that constitute our profile, to then be lumped and farmed out and sold to the highest bidder. Disappearing means disconnecting—unimaginable yet totally captivating. Precisely because it has become unfeasible, that deep urge to be anonymous, or even to be someone else, exists evermore powerfully within us.” In her research, the author consulted with experts such as Frank Ahearn, bestselling author of How to Disappear, and private investigator Steve Rambam. Greenwood interviewed individuals who have attempted to fake their deaths—e.g., John Darwin, who, after staging his own drowning, successfully disappeared for more than six years before becoming a local celebrity in England. The author also befriended a woman who has become the public face of the “Believers,” a committed group of fans who are certain that Michael Jackson is still alive. Ultimately, Greenwood traveled to the Philippines, a country with notoriously high incidents of death fraud, and endeavored to stage her own “pseudocide.” The author, perhaps inspired by writers such as Mary Roach or Susan Orlean, attempts a lighthearted approach to her material, interweaving personal experiences and insights, but the humor is a mixed bag.
Though earnestly researched, the narrative feels disjointed, and the book is never quite as engrossing as the potential for the intriguing content would suggest.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3933-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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