Sharp-eyed and humane.
The engaging memoir of a struggling Hollywood actress/producer's experiences working as the chauffeur for the women of the Saudi royal family.
Working as a professional limousine driver was the last thing Larson ever thought she would have to do. But with $40,000 in accumulated debts and no steady acting or producing jobs on the horizon, she had no choice. Just as she was "hitting rock bottom,” she was hired to drive the female members of the Saudi royal family and their entourage around Los Angeles. Larson knew that she would have to be "available 24/7, seven days a week, for perhaps as long as seven weeks straight.” She was to "be seen and not heard" and could never contradict the demands made of her, no matter how outrageous. She ferried female royals to and from plastic surgery offices and exclusive Rodeo Drive stores and readily solved such urgent problems as procuring every color she could find of a $500 Chantilly bra for a princess eager to show off her "new boobs.” At the same time, she also caught sometimes poignant glimpses into an adamantly traditional world that devalued women and restricted their freedom. Larson found unexpected allies in the teenage serving girls who waited on the princesses, virtual slaves without access to their own passports. No one, including the author herself, escapes Larson's witty scrutiny. The Saudi royals may have been blind to ordinary reality, but Larson, who "did it for the money,” was equally blind to the fact that to her employers, she was just a woman and a servant driving other women.
Sharp-eyed and humane.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4001-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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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