Two Washington, D.C., siblings, disillusioned with life and love, join forces to realize a sweetly successful venture.
In the early 1980s, a time the Park sisters recognized as one of “luxury and excess,” Frances (“Francie”) and Ginger (“Ginge”) opened their dream boutique sweetshop mere blocks from the White House. Though life became bittersweet since their beloved father passed away a few years prior, both women write of a steely resolve, a dedication to family and a passion for chocolate they’d inherited from their hardworking Korean parents. Becoming chocoholics “long before it was a diagnosis,” the sisters parlayed this lifelong adoration into a joint business plan, agreed on a name (based on a delectable double-chocolate brownie recipe) and set forth making “Chocolate Chocolate” thrive in the nation’s capital. But the road to profitability proved arduous as mouthwatering taste-tests failed to buffer a series of dilemmas including tedious location scouting, a contractor’s shoddy workmanship, bomb threats, a near-disastrous grand-opening party and months of flagging sales. With patience and diligence, Francie, Ginge and their doting mother eventually began to develop a steady, eccentric clientele of chocolate lovers. Sales flourished, bolstered by whimsical holidays and a flood of media attention, and the girls even managed a few dating adventures. Despite the experience of a string of Korean-inspired children’s books (The Have a Good Day Café, 2005, etc.) and a novel between them, their memoir develops a surprisingly rambling quality and boasts a generic narrative voice lacking the intimacy of a first-person perspective. Still, the Park sisters’ cheery adage remains the definitive take-away: “There are times when only chocolate can make a bad day better.” Smooth, soft-centered confection that goes down with a smile.
Pub Date: May 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-65293-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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