A raw, uncut journey into the wilds of Venezuela.
Travel writer Maslin (Iranian Rappers and Persian Porn: A Hitchhiker's Adventures in the New Iran, 2009) offers a firsthand account of the many debacles endured throughout his Venezuelan trek. Yet what makes his story unique is the manner in which he chooses to experience the country—by couch surfing, a get-what-you-pay-for approach to traveling in which hosts open their homes to strangers. The result is a comic tale in which Maslin soon finds himself accosted by corrupt cops and abandoned by unruly cab drivers, as well as serving as pincushion to an overzealous nurse and her needle. While the author blends his problematic personal narrative alongside Venezuela's historical backdrop, and current turbulent politics under the leadership of loose cannon Hugo Chávez the personal tale wins out. His experiences on the ground depict a poverty-stricken nation with a predatory populace looking to exploit naïve travelers. However, Maslin provides another view as well, in which the beauty-obsessed citizens somehow find the funds to frequent plastic surgeons with the regularity most people reserve for dentists. Venezuela's body-complex epidemic comes into even sharper focus as the author draws connections between plastic surgery and the country's love for beauty pageants—a cultural undercurrent that transforms young girls to grown women with the flick of a scalpel. Maslin soon moves beyond the Venezuelan people's proclivities, devoting equal time to the country's natural beauty, including a journey into the dense jungles to glimpse Angel Falls, the world’s tallest waterfall. This juxtaposition between people and place—as well as beauties both natural and otherwise—offers a rare commentary on a country most readers know little about. A complex portrait of Venezuela's people, poverty and promise.
Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61608-221-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
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
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