Verbose, engrossing tale of old-school hazard-embracing manhood.
Obsessively detailed account of a life spent recklessly adventuring, by “the world’s greatest living explorer” (according to Guinness).
Fiennes (Race to the Pole: Tragedy, Heroism, and Scott’s Antarctic Quest, 2004, etc.), an older cousin of actors Ralph and Joseph, would seem like a British archetype of eccentric bluster were his feats of endurance not so remarkable. Although he has written about them in specific narratives, this book presents a panoramic view of his life. Conceived during World War II on his father’s last leave prior to being killed, it was perhaps inevitable that the youthful baronet would yearn for heroism. As an adolescent at the prestigious Eton school, he earned the titular epithet via numerous pranks involving explosives and wall climbing. Hungry for military adventure, he joined the SAS (akin to Special Forces); realizing his reckless streak would keep him from advancing, he then volunteered for combat in Oman, helping the Sultan suppress a Marxist rebellion. Although tempted by the life of a mercenary soldier, Fiennes was deeply in love with a young woman named Ginny; he married her to keep from losing her, then embarked on a seemingly endless string of risky endeavors while disingenuously mourning time spent away from home. Beginning with a 1970 expedition to survey a remote Norwegian glacier, he pursued numerous sponsored journeys to the far ends of the earth. (“Spend no money on mounting an expedition” is his business motto.) He devoted most of the ’70s to an ambitious plan to circumnavigate the globe via the two poles, with no less a sponsor than Prince Charles. This led to more ambitious punishments, like a plan “to reach the North Pole with no outside support and no air contact.” Even after losing fingers to frostbite, Fiennes kept going, ultimately attacking both Everest and Eiger, as well as returning to the Arctic. The narrative becomes a blur of technique, landscape and the baffling dangers faced by Fiennes and his long-suffering wife and associates.
Verbose, engrossing tale of old-school hazard-embracing manhood.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-340-95169-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
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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