This engaging tribute should ring a bittersweet bell with many baby boomers whose aging parents are dying.
In this memoir, a journalist shares life lessons she learned from her colorful mother.
Back in the 1970s, Giese (A Woman’s Path, 1998, etc.) felt “sorely disappointed” with her stay-at-home mother. Describing herself as a “seventies-bell-bottom-wearing, Ms. magazine-writing daughter,” the author hoped she would never be like her mom, who spent countless hours embroidering dish towels. When Giese was in her 50s, however, she looked in her closet and recognized that her clothing was very much like her mom’s. The author also realized it was not such a bad thing to be like her parent, who lived life to the fullest. Very ladylike, Giese’s mom loved to wear ruffled blouses in the ’70s yet she hosted boozy, late-night dance parties and was an amazing arm wrestler (she always won). She unconventionally asked her daughter to call her Babe because she didn’t like her given name, Gladys. And with all that embroidering, Babe transformed her daughter’s bell-bottoms into hip, flowery fashion statements that rivaled designer brands. Painting a vivid portrait of a sometimes-contentious but always loving mother-daughter relationship, this spirited memoir is divided into 13 common-sense life lessons Babe taught, like “Don’t Be Drab,” “Never Leave a Compliment Unsaid,” and “Thank-You Notes Are Never Too Plentiful.” Giese’s prose is lively, and though the entire book can be read in a couple of hours, it’s brimming with entertaining anecdotes. For example, there was the time when the author and her family moved from Seattle to Houston, and Babe had them playing games during a hurricane. “Sometimes Life Begins Again At Ninety-Five” recalls energetic Babe moving to a seniors’ community and becoming the life of the party. Many of Babe’s lessons are wise; in “Go! While You Can,” she urged her daughter to travel while she was still physically able. At almost 98, Babe gave a heartbreaking final lesson—she showed her kids how to die with dignity. Despite describing painful episodes (Babe suffered five miscarriages), Giese’s account is mostly upbeat, as she celebrates her mom’s unique personality and fulfilling life.
This engaging tribute should ring a bittersweet bell with many baby boomers whose aging parents are dying.Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63152-533-9
Page Count: 142
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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