Investigative journalist Fried's biography of model-turned- heroin-addict Gia Carangi is more than your usual riches-to-rags downer, thanks to fascinating fashion-biz detail. Born in Philadelphia to semi-prosperous parents who split up when she was 11, Gia grew up wild. In high school, she dressed flamboyantly (e.g., wearing a quilted red satin jumpsuit and platform boots), smoked pot and swallowed Quaaludes, and was a lesbian and proud of it. After a local fashion photographer took shots of her, Gia, then 18, was offered a contract with a top N.Y.C. modeling agency. Within months of her move to Manhattan, she was being photographed by camera stars like Helmut Newton, Arthur Elgort, and Francesco Scavullo. Her attitude hit the late-70's Zeitgeist dead on: Gia dressed in men's clothes, wore no makeup, and cultivated an authority-be-damned attitude. As one editor put it: ``She had that boy/girl thing, and it was sexy.'' While Gia was late for shoots from the beginning, it was only later that her increasingly bizarre antics revealed that she had a serious heroin problem. In 1981, she moved back to Philadelphia, made various attempts to kick her habit and come back as a cover girl, but was diagnosed as HIV-positive. She died of AIDS in 1986. Fried offers a seamless narrative based on copious research, but, even so, Gia registers here as little more than a shallow kid with natural good looks and a mile-wide self-destructive steak. More rewarding are the highly detailed portraits of supporting players: the photographers, fashion editors, and models whose trajectories of fame coincided with that of the doomed model. A refreshingly undazzled take on the daily workings of the fashion scene. (First serial to Vanity Fair)
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-70104-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
