Chick-lit-alicious.
In this fun but also moving debut memoir, Gasbarre tells the story of how she “boomeranged” back home to help care for the newly widowed grandmother who unexpectedly became her “ideal relationship guru.”
The two women seemed polar opposites. “Grandma Glo” had married young and never finished college, while Gasbarre had graduated with a master’s degree, lived in Europe, and “spent all of [her] twenties questing and introspecting to understand where [she] fit in the world.” But for all the adventure she had experienced, the author, unlike her grandmother, had only known unfulfilling, short-lived romances with men. Yet the two women found common ground in one important way—they both shared an “equally intense affinity for the first generation all-American alpha male.” Their bond deepened as Gasbarre shared the details of the two relationships that occupied her attention during her stay at her parents’ house: one with an immature collegiate six years her junior and the other with a shy, gentle cosmetic surgeon who showed her what it was like to be courted. Grandma Glo in turn provided glimpses into a bygone era when men cherished their women and women stood steadfastly by their men. Gasbarre uses each “lesson” she learned from her Grandmother—such as learning to listen, being prepared to forgive and loving by existing—as the title of each chapter, and each chapter as a kind of chronological “illustration” of how she came to terms with that lesson. Her depiction of how two “fiery, independent women” bonded across generations is heartwarming without being saccharine. The author’s treatment of the central conflict that drives the book—the quintessentially modern female quandary of finding lasting love while staying true to personal ambitions—comes across with an integrity and veracity women readers will undoubtedly appreciate.
Chick-lit-alicious.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-199739-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
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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