These one-dimensional autobiographical fragments of girlhood, young adulthood, and a crumbling marriage are exercises in mere recollection, mostly lacking the reflection or the narrative drive to make them worthwhile. There are many reasons a writer's life stories can be interesting to other people. After reading Beard's, it's not easy to remember what they are. Excepting occasional jarring particles of portentousness (``Here is a scene,'' Beard instructs in ``Cousins'') and lapses into a voice embarrassingly reminiscent of a corny newspaper humor column, Beard's recollections usually hit just one note. It's one of childlike wonder, whether the stories take place in her childhood or not. A group of elements recur with an all-too-comforting familiarity—a favorite song played on a car tape deck (or on a Walkman or at a concert), an imaginary friend, a beloved dog, the moon. All are rendered with a generic lyricism consisting largely of the rampant manufacture of similes. Self-doubt and inner conflict don't much figure. External conflict, most notably a marriage that comes to an end, comes across largely as an intrusion into this otherwise unperturbed field of view. Fortunately, in one piece, and in parts of a couple of others, Beard's meandering recall runs into events that transcend the confines of her practiced style. ``Waiting'' juxtaposes two narratives of her mother's death: the December days when she and her sister took turns attending at the hospital and, with what remaining time they had, shopping for funeral arrangements. And in ``The Family Hour,'' Beard uses a lighter touch to give an original account of a familiar situation in memoirs—a childhood with a father who drinks. Were more of her memoirs to display the focus glimpsed in those pieces, they would be the makings of an impressive first book. (Part of this volume appeared in the New Yorker, and Beard is the recipient of a 1997 Whiting Award.)
Pub Date: Feb. 11, 1998
ISBN: 0-316-08554-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997
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 2024 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.
