A poignant memoir that bears comparison to the bestselling Running With Scissors—but better written and far darker.
Grim, well-told memoir of a boyhood among the much-maligned Romany Gypsy “travelers” of Britain.
The pseudonymous Walsh begins by debunking some well-known myths that have contributed to a pervasive historical bias against Gypsies: “contrary to popular belief, they don’t believe in magic, and the Gypsy ‘curse’ is no more than an age-old way of scaring non-Gypsies into buying something.” Unfortunately, the biographical reality he reveals is more disturbing than the old prejudices. Walsh explains that in the decades following World War II, many Gypsy families prospered and bought land and businesses such as scrapyards, while still maintaining elaborate vehicular “caravans.” He also asserts that within this closed society remain a number of unsavory traditions, like the persistence of elaborate cons to rip off non-Gypsies. The author portrays the men as devious, crude and angry, exemplified by another tradition that caused Walsh much misery: bare-knuckle fighting. This tradition was especially important for Walsh because his father was a third-generation champion; their relationship turned monstrously abusive when Walsh’s father realized his first-born did not display the necessary aggression. Years of torment and beatings followed, along with grisly sexual abuse at the hands of an uncle. By adolescence, Walsh’s realization that he was actually gay made matters worse. He ultimately realized he must escape the confinement of his culture, which inherently necessitated fleeing his family. Despite this framework of personal misery, Walsh writes thoughtfully about his connection to this heritage, focusing on his tangled but less-vicious relationships with his mother, sister, younger brothers and extended family. Walsh tries to end on an uplifting note, but this portrait of violence and ignorance cloaked in cultural tradition may prove hard for readers to shake off.
A poignant memoir that bears comparison to the bestselling Running With Scissors—but better written and far darker.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-62208-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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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