Occasionally clichéd, occasionally maudlin, but, overall, candid, thoughtful, and compelling.
The mother of renowned cyclist Lance Armstrong tells her own story, looking back on years filled with childhood poverty, teenage pregnancy, a disapproving mother, an alcoholic father, workplace hurdles, abusive husbands—and lots of love flowing to and from her son.
Fifty-year-old Kelly (the name she took from her current husband, number four) grew up in Dallas housing projects without amenities. She performed well in the classroom and in extracurricular activities, however, until becoming involved with one of the fast guys. Pregnant at 16, giving birth to Lance at 17, Kelly convinced the biological father to marry her. But he was frequently irresponsible and restless, eventually leaving his wife and son. Without any college education, Kelly struggled to find secretarial jobs that would pay the bills, and, after years of proving herself in the workplace, she became a telecommunications company executive with vast responsibilities. Proving herself in the world of marriage turned out to be harder. Husband number two was an abusive philanderer. Number three was considerate but lost job after job because of alcoholism. Only after Lance Armstrong achieved fame and wealth as a world-class athlete did Kelly find the quality husband she had been seeking for decades. Working with professional writer and cancer survivor Rodgers (Bald in the Land of Big Hair, 2001), Kelly touches hearts and minds in chapter after chapter. This is especially true when she recounts how she helped Lance beat life-threatening testicular cancer diagnosed when he was 25. Then she cheered him through his recovery until he won the Tour de France for a record sixth time. Some of the story has been told by Armstrong in It’s Not About the Bike. But most of the material is fresh. Toward book’s end, the saga moves to a new generation, now that Kelly is grandmother to Lance’s children.
Occasionally clichéd, occasionally maudlin, but, overall, candid, thoughtful, and compelling.Pub Date: April 5, 2005
ISBN: 0-7679-1855-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
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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