Most of this understated memoir recounts the author’s experiences and affection for his family, with some privileged...
A warm recollection of a lauded poet.
Hughes and his younger siblings, Olwyn and Ted, grew up in a Yorkshire village, moving to the mining town of Mexborough when Ted was 8 and the author 18. As young children, the two boys shared a love of the outdoors, camping in the woods, hunting with air rifles and especially fishing. Ted followed his older brother around devotedly, constantly asking questions. In Mexborough, though, their paths diverged, with the author leaving school to work in the wholesale clothing business, as a trainee fitter at the Bessemer Steel Works and, after an injury, as an auto mechanic. Olwyn and Ted, meanwhile, excelled in grammar school, won scholarships and headed to university. After serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, the author decided to begin training with the Nottingham City Police Force. Discouraged by poor food and housing, he decided to leave for Australia, seduced by a travel agent’s advertisement that read, “Come to the sun: migrate to Australia.” He settled there for the rest of his life. From 1948 until Ted’s death in 1998, the brothers saw each other only sporadically. Ted, of course, became famous for his poetry—he was poet laureate of England for 14 years—and his marriage to Sylvia Plath, which ended in her suicide. The author never met Plath, but he includes letters from his family describing their delight with her but also some concerns. Although Sylvia and Ted apparently were happy, they seemed not as “lively and cheery” as the author and his wife. Though he does not provide any analysis of his brother’s work, Hughes reprints some of Ted’s poems that have links to family experiences and notes works in his Collected Poems that are rooted in their childhood.
Most of this understated memoir recounts the author’s experiences and affection for his family, with some privileged glimpses into Ted’s life.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1250045270
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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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