by Carlton Davis ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2009
A jarring, compelling account of bipolar disease.
A harrowing look at mental illness and drug addiction.
Bipolar disorder has earned significant media attention. The glamour from movie stars and musicians who suffer from the mental illness has rubbed off on the disease, giving some the idea that it’s a benign condition falling somewhere between moodiness and ADD. The brutal reality of bipolar disorder is fitfully explored in Bipolar Bare. Davis rips away the gloss and exposes the raw emotional bruises that the illness creates. With a forward by the author’s psychiatrist and vivid drawings of his nightmares and warped fantasies, the memoir reads like a mental patient’s journal. Davis tells his story from two perspectives–his and that of his alter ego Carlotta. This character is a whore/dominatrix/angel who guides and admonishes him. Both narrators escort readers through the author’s crack addiction, suicide attempts, institutionalization and cross-dressing. Much like the wildly diverging thoughts of an unstable mind, the book veers from the present to the past, from reality to dreams. It’s a difficult format to follow, but remains engaging. The author devotes a large portion of his writing to the dysfunctional wasteland of his childhood. Abandoned by his privileged father and nightclub-singer mother, he puzzles through how his youth affected the rest of his life. It’s never clear what is fact and what is imagination, but Davis clearly did not receive much nurturing as a child. He recalls being locked in dressing rooms as his mother performed in clubs and being handed off to a grandmother who cared more for family heirlooms than her grandson. In between these childhood memories, the author inserts scenes of him smoking a crack pipe as his wife prepares for work, stealing his stepmother’s bra and girdle to wear when he’s alone and contemplating suicide as he leans over a bridge. Readers may have trouble keeping track of so many voices and stories, but this memoir courageously captures Davis’ mental struggles and riveting climb to recovery.
A jarring, compelling account of bipolar disease.Pub Date: March 10, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-2070-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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