Frequently sharp and funny, but Cohen veers so often between comedy and despair that the effect is disorienting.
Uneven memoir by a sitcom writer who survived a series of personal tragedies.
Witty but depression-prone Cohen was thrilled to land a gig on the staff of Manhattan-based Spin City, although she eventually likened the job to “a dysfunctional family Thanksgiving…a group of people are crammed around a table, yelling over one another while eating to the point of discomfort.” Then, in quick succession, Cohen was fired from her dream job, her beloved mother died of cancer and her boyfriend dumped her. Grief manifested itself as a disfiguring facial rash so severe that she was sequestered in her apartment for nearly a year, unable to endure humidity and restricted to a bland diet. Suddenly, without explanation, the memoir moves on to show Cohen teaching spinning classes at her local gym and cautiously dating a TV reporter. Too much is left unexplained: Why was she fired, and why didn’t she pursue other television jobs? How was her medical condition resolved, and was it truly psychosomatic? And why, since her boyfriend was such a jerk, was she unable to move on some two years after the breakup? “I liked to consider myself a late bloomer, meaning someone who would eventually, however late, come into bloom,” Cohen writes. “Although when and if I would bloom remained a mystery.” Fortunately, she eventually did flower, tackling bike riding and tennis lessons with equal parts terror and bravado, and beginning a new career as a dating columnist. When, at 39, she finally met “William” (he requested a pseudonym), the two instantly connected and quickly became engaged. Although the relationship dissolved when William’s father died and he returned to California to work through his grief, this time Cohen retained her equilibrium.
Frequently sharp and funny, but Cohen veers so often between comedy and despair that the effect is disorienting.Pub Date: July 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4013-0002-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
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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