Heartfelt sketches of a deeply troubling era in Italian history.
Personable, gently humorous memories of adolescence under Mussolini by an Italian chef and author (A Thousand Bells at Noon: A Roman’s Guide to the Secrets and Pleasures of His Native City, 2002, etc.).
Romagnoli, who died in late 2008, turned 14 in 1939, when his homeland was seized by the nationalist fever incited by Il Duce and his Fascist Party. Living in a middle-class section of Rome with his father, mother and two siblings, young Romagnoli had sensed the ongoing “masquerade” since Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia several years earlier. While his gung-ho neighbors were vociferously devoted to the Fascist cause, Romagnoli’s father was a free-thinking agnostic who often received the dreaded cartoline rosse (“red postcards”), which summoned him to the police station for interrogation. As a result, his job promotions were thwarted. As the war progressed and rations were instituted, the family got by due to their enterprising mother’s cooking. The author became a bicycle messenger for his pro-partisan teachers and befriended a half-German schoolmate, Otto, who had more accurate news of the war. Called for military duty by the Fascists in early 1944, Romagnoli was determined not to help the Germans and fled to his aunt Elena’s farm in Frontale, where she ran the post office while also abetting partisans and refugees. The author assumed duties as a messenger and cook and became friendly with British and American officers organizing the command between the Allies and the partisans at San Vicino. It was a heady, dangerous time for the youth, and his portraits of these local heroes and villains form an invaluable depiction of a historically significant time and place.
Heartfelt sketches of a deeply troubling era in Italian history.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-55454-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2009
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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