Readers are likely to enjoy the authors’ company almost as much as they seem to enjoy each other’s.
In an oral history that reads like playful conversation, two popular TV stars discuss how they came together and stayed together.
If the Captain & Tennille talked a little naughtier in public, their “Love Will Keep Us Together” could serve as a theme song for this extended ode to marital harmony. The book is nonchronological, proceeding in chapters focusing on topics including religion, sex (and previous relationships), art, awards ceremonies, and fame in general. When they met in 2000 while rehearsing for a play, Mullally was already successful with Will & Grace, while Offerman (Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop, 2016, etc.) was as much a carpenter as an actor. It wasn’t love at first sight, at least on her end, but, he says, “we recognized a kindred spirit in our performance styles, if you will. And senses of humor.” She had been married and had rushed into other relationships that didn’t work out, while he had come from a large, loving Midwestern family and had those values instilled in him. “You’re not the kind of guy who had a million women and was a dog,” she tells him. “I always hated those kind of guys.” The authors’ banter occasionally edges toward pillow talk, and they come across like perennial honeymooners. The age difference (she’s nearly 12 years older) was never an issue, and it doesn’t appear that he was bothered by her success, though his breakthrough role in Parks and Recreation has leveled the playing field. If there is a secret to their love, it is perhaps best distilled in Mullally’s solo chapter of beauty tips, where she advises, “just try to be the best version of what you are naturally.” They amuse themselves, Offerman explains, by “doing jigsaw puzzles while simultaneously listening to audiobooks.”
Readers are likely to enjoy the authors’ company almost as much as they seem to enjoy each other’s.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-98667-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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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