Shoddy flummery masquerading as biography. This “life” of the actor best known for playing Superman presupposes an absurdly simple-minded public. The prose is more suited to an overly enthusiastic third-grade reading primer. And let’s not forget the cynicism that surely inspired this travesty. Reeve was a bright young man, with a small gift for acting when he won the role of Superman (based largely on his resemblance to the cartoon character). He had a chance at semi-stardom, but squandered it with a series of extremely poor role choices. Every year, he faded further into obscurity, until a horse-riding accident left him paralyzed. Hollywood loves a cripple, especially when there’s an added fillip of mawkish irony, and so Reeve has returned to the limelight. Veteran quickie biographer Nickson (Emma: The Many Faces of Emma Thompson, not reviewed, etc.) shamelessly vultures onto Reeve’s tragedy with smarmy avowals of admiration: “Chris is not just a brave man, he’s someone who refuses to accept the idea of defeat in this, or in anything regarding his life. He’s showing us what people at their best can be . . . and he deserves all the support we can offer him.” The Newsweek cover story last year on Reeve and his situation was more revealing and detailed than Nickson’s hash and rehash of other already-published magazine articles. Readers who can—t get enough of Reeve are best advised to wait for his autobiography (see p. 650).
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-19028-X
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
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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