Like Froot Loops for dinner: fun but unsubstantial.
An immature woman takes a crack at maturity in this chatty memoir.
Lancaster (My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover If Not Being A Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or, a Culture-Up Manifesto, 2010, etc.) provides some laugh-out-loud moments: Her accounts of giving herself a moustache wax in the middle of the night and of putting Vaseline all over her cat showcase the author’s cheerful willingness to share potentially embarrassing yet hilarious moments from her life. Most of the stories are about rites of adulthood, such as refinancing a mortgage and getting a mammogram, and Lancaster concludes each with a short “Reluctant Adult Lesson Learned.” This theme organizes what could have otherwise been a scattered series of anecdotes. On the whole, however, her experiences are more ordinary than transformative. Lancaster is the author of several other similar memoirs (Bitter is the New Black, Such a Pretty Fat) and often assumes that readers will be familiar with her back story, which could make it difficult for those new to her work to follow the narrative thread. At its best, this memoir will feel as comfortable as a long conversation with an old friend. However, longtime fans may wonder if they have anything in common with their old friend anymore—particularly during the chapter in which she describes her hunt for the perfect vintage bowling trophy—and new readers may occasionally feel like they are eavesdropping on an obnoxious person braying into her cell phone. Ultimately, Lancaster is abrasive and proud of it, and her ability to be true to herself mostly redeems her less-than-flattering moments.
Like Froot Loops for dinner: fun but unsubstantial.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-451-23317-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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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