A remarkable, emotional journey through unrelenting pain—and laughter.
The funny, moving story of the blue-eyed, blond model/actress who became the unlikely poster girl for the plight of the poor and uninsured in America after she was struck by a car in New York City street in 2004.
Though Gorman admits that she’s not the kind of woman who typically elicits sympathy from most folks, the author’s tale of woe following her near-death experience is so tragic and compelling, it doesn’t matter one bit that she never once lets her coarse, sarcastic armor slip. She may be the furthest thing from Snow White (more like the “witch-bitch”), but her harrowing experience grappling with a twisted spine, disinterested welfare hacks and outrageous court officers rendered her so broken and vulnerable, readers will root for this unrepentantly bitchy, foul-mouthed fighter. In fact, Gorman’s obvious toughness in dealing with her suddenly penniless situation following her accident only underscores the bleakness of the whole affair. Even amid the desperation, love pulsates just as powerfully as the pain in this candid account of one out-of-work woman’s season in uninsured hell. It’s a saccharine-free yarn, yet Gorman’s relationships with her mother (an ex-nun) and her former modeling partner are both touching and profound. As is often the case, the author only discovered who her true friends were after she suffered her accident and resulting health-care nightmare. Ultimately, Gorman succeeds in not only telling her own triumphant story, but also illuminating the countless problems with the broken American health-care and justice systems. The outcome of her slam-dunk court case is nothing less than astounding, and so is her resurrection.
A remarkable, emotional journey through unrelenting pain—and laughter.Pub Date: March 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-53728-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Perigee/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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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