Vincent fills her pages with accounts of her life and Edward’s past, but for readers, the narrative becomes lighter on...
In shape, size, and spirit, the latest from New York Post reporter Vincent (Gilded Lily: Lily Safra: The Making of One of the World's Wealthiest Widows, 2010, etc.) is like Tuesdays with Morrie with gourmet dinners.
The setup finds the author befriending the father of a friend, a recent widower in his 90s who saw no reason to go on living since the death of his beloved wife. Vincent was also in the middle of a personal crisis, with her marriage “unraveling, despite my best efforts to pretend that nothing was wrong.” She had joined the Post as an investigative reporter in hopes that a geographical change might benefit her family, but neither the job nor the move had been satisfying. Edward began cooking for the author once a week, giving them each something to look forward to, as “he was still mourning his beloved Paula and I was starting to see how unhappy I was in my marriage.” Preparing elaborate meals largely without recipes, the self-taught chef taught the middle-age journalist something about cooking but even more about appreciating life. “He was teaching me the art of patience, the luxury of slowing down and taking the time to think about everything I did,” she reflects, continuing, “I realize he was forcing me to deconstruct my own life, to cut it back to the bone and examine the entrails, no matter how messy that proved to be.” The meals sound mouthwatering, but the food metaphors for the life well lived wear thin. Vincent’s life did change, in pretty much every respect, and her relationship with her host deepened, but there’s a limit to how much inspiration one can receive from even the best of meals.
Vincent fills her pages with accounts of her life and Edward’s past, but for readers, the narrative becomes lighter on epiphany than calories.Pub Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1616204228
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
