An inspiring and evocative memoir.
Debut author Genger relates the story of her life as a long-haul truck driver dealing with mental illness and alcoholism.
The author was born and raised in Eureka, California, where she grew up in a “huge house” maintained by a housekeeper and enjoyed vacations to Mexico in her father’s private airplane. However, the memoir begins later, in June 1977, when her fiance drunkenly stepped out of a moving pickup, fracturing his skull—an event that led her to realize that she “didn’t have to marry the lying, argumentative cokehead after all.” Her life descended into a rapid tailspin, and the author goes on to describe what she refers to as “the story about myself that I can’t yet hear,” involving psychotic episodes, institutionalization, a failed suicide attempt, and a moment of dazzling epiphany when she realized, “If I can’t even die, I might as well live.” This turned out to be the beginning of an engaging adventure, as Genger trained to be a cross-country truck driver and took to the road. Her tales of weird and wild characters, intimidating locations, robberies, and breakdowns are worthy of a picaresque novel. Genger is an amazingly descriptive and expressive writer who deftly captures the nauseating unsteadiness of her mental illness: “I sat there, miserably uncomfortable, on the sticky plastic seat, unable to move, feeling sick with all the visuals whizzing by. Telephone poles hit my eyes, bushes blurred like tripping on acid.” She also possesses the ability to switch gears and deliver high-octane prose: “I lay on the horn. Ran the red light. Barreled directly toward the back of his truck.” The overall result is, by turns, an emotionally intuitive memoir and a rip-roaring American road story in the Jack Kerouac tradition—one with a valiant protagonist that readers will root for.
An inspiring and evocative memoir.Pub Date: April 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9996325-1-2
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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