Dramatic and laugh-out-loud funny, beautifully written and deftly constructed, deeply affecting in its honest portrayal of...
Father and son jointly relate their experiences when the younger man joins the Marines.
To escape Dad's constant meddling, John leaves suburban Boston after high-school graduation in 1999 and heads for Marine Corps training on Parris Island, South Carolina. Novelist father Frank (Saving Grandma, 1997, etc.) expresses concern and embarrassment; the Schaeffers are the affluent sort who send their kids to college, not the military. Personal narratives and letters by both men chronicle the period from August through November, when John graduates. Both are gifted writers: the father open about his flaws, the son a skillful and humorous observer of Corps life. Life on PI begins with complete disorientation: yelling, panic, constant exercise, long sleepless stretches, not enough food, and no time references bewilder the recruits. Back home, Dad has to defend his son's choice to insensitive neighbors. Things gradually change. John accepts the discipline from his four drill instructors, succeeds with the physical discipline, and loves the intense unity. Raised in Switzerland, Frank develops a patriotic burst for the US, expressed in an appreciation for our freedoms and applied to local political issues. He befriends other Marine families and comes to revile Bill Clinton. John loses 12 pounds and fantasizes about Burger King. The recruits lack the time and energy to make friendships, but they form a protective bond. To graduate, they must remain calm in a gas chamber, survive a swim test with full gear, and pass a difficult rifle exam. In the final pages, John is doing advanced training in Florida, and Frank’s planned visit is derailed by 9/11. Though worried after the terrorist attack, he writes, “At least I knew that I could look the men and women in uniform in the eye. My son was one of them.”
Dramatic and laugh-out-loud funny, beautifully written and deftly constructed, deeply affecting in its honest portrayal of the authors’ passions: a stunning achievement.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7867-1097-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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