At times (especially after the not-terribly-startling revelation of Ty’s affair with his adoring, married art student)...
A memoir of hard-won personal development and marital dissolution, set against the transformations of the baby-boomer era, by psychotherapist Pearlman (Keep the Home Fires Burning, not reviewed).
The author begins with ominous evocations of her upbringing in a precariously prosperous, urban Jewish household dominated by the figure of her father—a driven businessman, stern but devoted to his children, whom she gradually realized was a serial philanderer. When he died of heart failure at 46, Pearlman was confronted with the uneasy ambiguities presented by his longtime mistress’s grief, her mother’s evident equanimity, and the revelations of her beloved grandfather’s infidelity as well. Determined to break this familial pattern, and influenced by the early 1960s aura of social transformation, Pearlman fell in love with and married “Ty,” an African-American football player and artist who seemed to epitomize the turbulent dreams of the era. The author depicts her metamorphosis (from reserved, sheltered Jewish girl to politicized, sexually aware young woman) as part of the great urban and social transformations of the 1950s and ’60s. For two decades, Pearlman and Ty enjoyed a sexually charged, progressive marriage, where they both worked and shared child-raising responsibilities; she even published a book on long-term sexual monogamy. Yet this domestic idyll slowly declined as Ty succumbed to temptation. Eventually Pearlman and Ty separate, unable to reconcile separate desires, and the epilogue shows the author cultivating a new relationship.
At times (especially after the not-terribly-startling revelation of Ty’s affair with his adoring, married art student) Pearlman’s memoir becomes repetitive and predictable, but she has a sharp eye for detail and is adept at expanding her discussion of infidelity’s pain and relationship-mutating qualities—pinpointing its effects on children, adult acquaintances, and even (in the case of her parents and grandparents) one’s history.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-9673701-2-4
Page Count: 248
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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