All of the fragments that make up this memoir by the contemporary master have appeared previously in (mostly) British periodicals. But not all of them meet Trevor's usually high literary standards. Less surprisingly, Trevor here speaks in the same measured tones of his fiction, and there is little in the way of self- revelation. Arranged chronologically by subject—not year of composition—the earliest pieces form a compelling portrait of Protestant life in the hard-core Catholic south of Ireland, where Trevor, in his youth, was always treated fairly, even in Catholic schools. Carried along by his father's itinerant career in banking, the Trevor boys were exposed to the wondrous landscape of Ireland. Trevor remembers with particular fondness County Cork, but his real love was indoors at the cinema, where he escaped from a series of horrid schools and teachers. Boarding school in Dublin was dreadful under a headmaster whose only concerns were cricket and spelling bees. But there were inspiring teachers as well: a sculptor with exacting standards, a Yeats scholar of ethereal brilliance, and a theologian of sound moral reason. Later, at Trinity, Trevor spent more time enjoying Dublin nightlife than serious scholarly pursuits, all of which ill prepared him for his first job as a schoolteacher. In London, during the Fifties, Trevor slowly acquired the skills of a copywriter, surrounded by all sorts of interesting characters and supervised by an indulgent boss. The last third of this patchwork book pieces together travel essays about the Shah's Iran, New York City in the 70's, and "invigorating" San Francisco. Literary reviews take the author so far from himself that it comes as a pleasant shock when he ends with a lyrical celebration of the Nire Valley in County Tipperary. Vintage Trevor—most especially in the self-deprecating early sketches and the schoolboy portraits.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0140240292
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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
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