One appreciates the effort taken to set the record straight on matters like the creation of Destiny’s Child and the Beyoncé...
A thorough effort from celebrity biographer Taraborrelli (The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty, 2014, etc.) that’s long on legwork and short on new insight.
In examining the life and career of the famously private Beyoncé Knowles, the author takes great care to give a voice to anyone with a Beyoncé story to tell. From the women who discovered the future superstar to producers, makeup artists, and relatives of each (including the estranged father of a former band mate), Taraborrelli lets everyone with an anecdote tell it here. The chattiest primary source—no one in Beyoncé’s family participated in the book—is Lyndall Locke, Beyoncé’s first boyfriend. His stories of their relationship, spanning Beyoncé’s preteen years through her early 20s, are clearly oft-told. Taraborrelli uses Locke’s testimony liberally and charitably, but no one gets a more understanding treatment than Mathew Knowles, Beyoncé’s father and former manager. While we learn about drug abuse allegations and potential sex addiction, and though he is more than once compared to Joe Jackson, here, Mathew is a tragic character with a fatal flaw: he simply wanted Beyoncé to succeed above all else. In his acknowledgements, Taraborrelli writes that he was excited to tackle a life’s story full of “surprising twists and turns.” The story, ultimately, is Mathew’s, with Beyoncé in a supporting role in the chronicle of her father’s journey from impoverished child to successful businessman to manager of one of the biggest stars of the 21st century—and his fall from that position.
One appreciates the effort taken to set the record straight on matters like the creation of Destiny’s Child and the Beyoncé brand, and it’s admirable that Taraborrelli would make such an effort to give so many people in Beyoncé’s life credit. Unfortunately, meticulous research and interviews with peripheral players don’t offer much that isn’t already known about the superstar who is a shadowy figure.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-1672-8
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2015
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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