Such a literary flourish is an exception to the matter-of-fact approach that characterizes the narrative, where most of the...
An inspirational memoir by a writer who refuses to be defined by his paralysis, as he comes to terms with the unknown man who shot him.
As an intelligent, talented, athletic and slightly rebellious 13-year-old from what was then the ghetto of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, McGill experienced a tragedy in 1982 that would lead to epiphany. Walking home with a friend on New Year’s Day, he fell victim to a senseless, apparently motiveless gunshot from an unseen sniper. His initial recovery required six months in the hospital, where he learned to adjust to his new life as a quadriplegic, discovering the ways that he could take care of himself and the limits to what he could do. The incident would transform his life, in surprisingly positive ways as well as predictably negative ones, as he explains in this memoir addressed to the man who shot him, a man he will never know but to whom he forever feels linked. “Until I speak to you, I can never fully close this door,” he writes. “And I need that resolution. I think I’ve earned it.” He gives his shooter a name, a race and a plausibility that led him to this unfocused violence. But while he’s addressing the “Marcus” he has invented, he is also exorcising justifiable anger and offering his own life as an example of the rewards one can reap by accepting loss and learning the value of love. “I didn’t write this book for you, Marcus,” he writes. “My reasons for writing this are bigger than you or me, my friend. I wrote this book to release demons into the warm night air.”
Such a literary flourish is an exception to the matter-of-fact approach that characterizes the narrative, where most of the lessons learned are plainspoken, but also hard won.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9307-3
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
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 2025 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.
