Dull and uninspiring—could definitely use some of Freddie Mercury’s camp to liven things up.
Graphic memoir by a British lad who grew up obsessed by Queen and never grew out of it.
Eleven-year-old Dawson washed up on American shores in 1986, when he was interested in little beside battling with his sister over who was more all-important musically: Queen (his vote) or George Michael/Wham! (her weak competition). The cartoonist, creator of the comic-book series Gabagool!, strings together various life memories from an insecure childhood to an only mildly less insecure young adulthood, tracking along the way his obsession with Queen. High points included Dawson performing Queen songs at a talent show; the low point was probably being mocked by schoolmates after Freddie Mercury’s death in 1991. Credit should go to the author for not trying to make his life mirror too closely that of the complex (some would say pompous) arena-rock band—he doesn’t overdo his metaphor. Dawson’s artwork has a similarly unassuming quality, its slightly exaggerated style occasionally mindful of Peter Bagge’s Hate comics, but without the punk extremism. Occasional interludes imagine episodes in the career of George Michael (perhaps as a nod to the author’s sister?), but for the most part Dawson offers an uninterrupted flow of biographical data. Even though he’s supposedly the world’s greatest Queen fan, he never makes readers understand exactly what the band means to him. Long before the book is finished, his obsession with Queen seems more like a convenient hook than a topic he intends to explore in any depth.
Dull and uninspiring—could definitely use some of Freddie Mercury’s camp to liven things up.Pub Date: June 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59691-476-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2008
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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