Gushing, not to say ecstatic, exercise in groupiespeak, and a sequel to Des Barres's I'm with the Band (1987). Des Barres's follow-up to her days with the rock fabs begins as a rerun but soon settles into the downside of her glory days: adult life, more or less, though the endless name-dropping requires a rock-'n'-roll directory. As the memoir begins, still-unmarried Pamela Miller, introduced on the Today show as ``Queen of the Groupies'' (``Wow. What a twisted and unique legacy. I never know whether to defend myself or take a bow''), is madly in love with drug-and-booze-ridden Michael Des Barres, a ``glitter-glam'' British rock star who has just helped form a new group, which flops. Insecure Mike and moaning Pam fly to jobs on both coasts and hop over to England to see Mike's parents. Pam's own group, Girls Totally Outrageous, folds, but Pam runs about getting film parts (with Sly Stallone in Paradise Alley, among others) and finding entertainment niches for her talents. But ``the magic dust on the Sunset Strip had turned into sticky wads of filthy goop that stuck to the bottom of my platforms.'' Pam and Mike buddy or room with burgeoning greats Don Johnson, Melanie Griffith, Tom Cruise, and others. Throughout, Pam keeps a diary (excerpted occasionally here), and at last marries bombed-out Mike and has a child. Eventually, Mike joins AA, which works for him, and by book's end is a tower of honesty—but not before he begins playing around during early sobriety, leading to an inevitable separation. Meanwhile, Pam lands a big-time rock star (known here only as ``HIM'') and has a yearlong, super-private sex affair ``on this flaming rocket trip to the stratosphere.'' Dumbfoundingly overripe musk, but just right for the right ears. (Photos—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 17, 1992
ISBN: 0-688-09149-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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