More maudlin than inspirational, though ardent dog lovers may be touched by certain scenes and find Kopp’s story satisfying.
A memoir that attempts to weave together two themes of deep interest to the author: her eating disorder and her love for dogs, especially pit bulls.
As a teenager, Kopp, an animal welfare advocate and novice writer, suffered from bulimia, bingeing and purging in an attempt to achieve the body she thought would make her lovable. Warning to readers with a low queasiness threshold: the author does not spare details of her disorder, recounting in full color hiding in bathrooms and shoving her fingers down her throat to induce vomiting. Woven into this growing-up part of her memoir are stories of her alcoholic father (“Dad wasn’t angry or unpredictable when he drank. He was angry and unpredictable when sober”) and of her own sexual misadventures. Kopp describes somewhat sketchily her experiences later at live-in rehab centers and at open support meetings for people with eating disorders, but she lavishes her greatest narrative attention on damaged or doomed dogs at animal shelters. Working first at an animal shelter in San Diego and then one in Los Angeles, the author discovered that the unconditional love of animals was the key to her redemption. Despite relapses, the author’s healing continued as her connection with shelter dogs grew. The emotional attachment between human and beast eventually led to recovery of her health and to her becoming an animal welfare activist, working to find loving homes for abandoned dogs. Pit bulls figure largely in her story, and an afterword features a plea for greater public understanding and acceptance of the breed (“my four-legged sanctuaries, my therapists, my healers, my beefy love-bugs…”). Unfortunately, the author’s writing chops leave much to be desired, and the narrative is often rambling and sometimes self-indulgent.
More maudlin than inspirational, though ardent dog lovers may be touched by certain scenes and find Kopp’s story satisfying.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237022-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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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