While references to sexual acts, male anatomy, and drug use may put off some readers, most who either recall or are curious...
Fundraising adviser Cove recalls with humor and understanding a pivotal year in the life of his family.
The first-time author was 12 in 1978 when his family moved from Manhattan to Salem, Massachusetts. This was his eighth move, so he quickly settled into the routine of new friends, potential girlfriends, bar mitzvah preparation, the practice of storing undelivered newspapers from his paper route in his closet, and living in a dilapidated if historic house from whose sloping roof he could see the ocean and smoke whatever substances he could procure. Into this scene arrived one of his father’s old California hippie friends, Howie, and his new wife, Carly. Howie, at first planning to stay just a couple weeks, hung around for months and, at a big Thanksgiving dinner, made an impression by hauling out a new issue of Playgirl in which he was the centerfold. Howie decided that his next step up the career ladder would be to earn the title of Playgirl’s “Man of the Year,” and he enlisted Cove to be his campaign organizer in reaching out to the reluctant residents of Salem. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the marriage of the author’s parents was quietly, and then not so quietly, unraveling. Cove has a light touch and an eye for regional and temporal detail, and if some of his anecdotes appear to have been exaggerated for dramatic effect, he never comes across as self-aggrandizing. His pains and pleasures have been tempered by the decades, and the book clearly conveys both his disappointment with his parents at the time and the ways the years since have shaped his forgiveness and appreciation of them.
While references to sexual acts, male anatomy, and drug use may put off some readers, most who either recall or are curious about this free-loving period of history will find themselves satisfied by Cove’s re-creation of his journey out of boyhood.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-12396-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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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