A tender, charming portrait of a consummate canine connoisseur.
The first truly personal story from Coren (Psychology/Univ. of British Columbia; The Modern Dog: How Dogs Have Changed People and Society and Improved Our Lives, 2009, etc.), an expert on human-dog interaction.
The author’s previous books have addressed how man’s best friend thinks, behaves, speaks and interprets, and why humans love them so much. This memoir follows suit with charming biographical history of his youth enriched by a variety of pets, all of whom played a large part in his emotional development. Though he’d been bitten by dogs before—and endured the painful rabies treatment required—his affinity for canines continued to prosper. Even as his psychology career began to dominate his free time, Coren remained dedicated to the dogs in his life. His training as a researcher, psychologist and dog enthusiast “unlocked for me a way of looking at canine behavior and human relationships with dogs.” The author’s early history soon yields to life with Joan, a mature, married student from one of his evening university psychology classes in Vancouver. As her abusive marriage dissolved and her romance with the author simmered, Joan, recognizing his love of dogs, purchased an oversized Cairn terrier resembling “a jumbo version of Toto.” As the “canine whirlwind” named Flint began the bonding process, Coren foreshadows an increasingly volatile relationship between Joan and the “effervescent” pet, who became more of an irritant than a companion to her, even after her marriage to the author. Coren notes that Flint’s particular terrier breed is notorious for disobedience, but the dog seemed amenable to the trial-and-error processes of house-training, socialization, obedience, “scent discrimination” and an exuberant stint on the dog-show circuit. Eventually, the author adopted and trained a new spaniel puppy, Wizard, who buffered Joan’s middle-aged angst and soothed the author's grief as Flint succumbed to old age.
A tender, charming portrait of a consummate canine connoisseur.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-8920-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
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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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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