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SLEEPLESS NIGHTS AND KISSES FOR BREAKFAST

REFLECTIONS ON FATHERHOOD

Charming, “near-daily snapshots” of fatherhood.

An Italian father reflects on raising three daughters.

In this short, succinct, and sweet collection of essays, which became a bestseller in Italy, Bussola writes about being a work-at-home father of three young girls. He shares the funny, sad, angry, bittersweet, loving jumble of thoughts and feelings that make up being a parent who is trying as hard as he can to do the right thing, say the right thing, and be the right thing at the right moment so his girls grow into intelligent, compassionate women like their mother. “This book is a journal of sorts,” writes the author. “It’s about how being a father has made me a better man, a more confident artist, and a more attentive partner….The view [the girls] provide gives me a different way of looking at everything, even at what I was before they came along.” Bussola is used to the middle-of-the-night sicknesses, the fears of attending school for the first time, and the quirky, wonder-filled, often hilarious questions only children can ask from their different perspectives. Throughout the collection, readers will feel the author’s palpable love and empathy for his children along with the dogged tiredness that pervades a parent’s life and the constant questioning and self-doubt of whether one is doing everything possible to make sure the day flows smoothly from one moment to the next. Along with his thoughts on life as a father, Bussola shares comments on the world, whether it’s the prejudice he sees around him, the irritation he feels toward a telemarketer, or the suspicions he houses toward a stranger who appears at his gate who wants nothing more than a bottle of water. These commentaries help balance the essays, which could tend toward the overly cute if they focused only on his children.

Charming, “near-daily snapshots” of fatherhood.

Pub Date: May 9, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-14-313137-3

Page Count: 288

Publisher: TarcherPerigee

Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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