A delightfully breezy read about experimentation, often humorous and companionable.
In this debut memoir, a woman devises a plan to yank herself out of a midlife malaise.
Stanfa-Stanley found herself mired in a safe routine as she entered her mid-50s, becoming increasingly discomfited by her lack of spontaneous adventure. Divorced and now an empty-nester, she devised a scheme to shake things up: over the course of a year, she would attempt 52 new activities that would push her to the edge of her personal boundaries, a combination of exhilarating and frightening, what she called an “unbucket list.” The only other criterion of selection would be that her experiences be laughter inducing. The remembrance divides into five seasons of experimentation (summer to summer) and each new endeavor receives its own chapter. Most of the chapters are only a few pages long, and for the most part can be read out of sequence. The list itself is an eclectic one—some of the pursuits are designed to be educational; for example, the author visits a synagogue, a Hindu congregation, and a Baptist church. Others are eccentrically challenging like beekeeping, entering a pizza-eating contest, and going vegan for a week. And there is some travel as well, including a totally unplanned trip to Fort Myers, Florida—the author tasked herself with getting on the first plane to wherever—and a solo trip to Italy. Along the way, Stanfa-Stanley learned a lesson about the value of self-imposed discomfort, and the fortifying effects of testing one’s mettle: “Life is full of hurdles, but the biggest obstacle is our decision to stop at a bump or a crossroad, fearful to move on.” In her quirky account, the author writes with an informal charm and delivers each anecdote almost intimately, like the reader is a trusted friend (“Here’s the thing about belly dancing: You seldom look as sexy as you hoped. Given my middle-aged figure and history of uncoordination, looking sexy was a long shot”). The tone is consistently lighthearted and comedic, and there’s no shortage of opportunities to giggle. But many of the author’s self-directed dares are a bit predictable and less than terrifying: she visited a nude beach, conquered a fear of public speaking, collected donations for the Salvation Army, and watched an evening of horror movies.
A delightfully breezy read about experimentation, often humorous and companionable.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63152-290-1
Page Count: 225
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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