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OF TIME AND MEMORY

A MOTHER'S STORY

A son’s loving and determined quest to discover the mother he never knew—the young woman who died, at 19, shortly after giving birth to her twin sons. Beyond these harsh and tragic facts, Peggy remained a mystery to novelist and memoirist Snyder (The Cliff Walk: A Memoir of a Lost Job and a Found Life, 1997, etc.) for nearly 50 years. Then, coming to terms with his father’s rapidly declining health and powers of memory, Snyder was gripped with an overpowering need to understand who his mother was. From photographs, conversations with relatives and friends, and some genuine detective work, this volume was born. It’s Snyder’s gift to his ailing father, to his mother (the girl his father loved), and to all people “in love, or out of it, or trying to stay in love” with the person they have pledged themselves to. It is, ultimately, a gift to himself—an urgent reminder of the need to cherish his own family. Re-creating one parent’s love story and discovering the inner life of a 19-year-old woman one never knew can be an intimidating task in the best of circumstances. Snyder faced additional obstacles. Peggy kept her feelings to herself, shared her father’s dark moods, and died of uncertain causes. By dint of careful research and plain good luck, Snyder discovers the true cause of his mother’s death—preeclampsia—and her fatal sacrifice in delivering her babies. By entering into his mother’s world with the eye of a writer and the determination of a man possessed, Snyder discovers the vulnerable young woman who found unquestioned love with his father. Of Time and Memory is not so much a biography as a “story.” One has to suspend disbelief when the narrative re-creates scenes that the author could only have invented, but then imagination must play a role in telling any love story. At his best, Snyder offers poignant glimpses into everyday family situations, reminding us of the love present in our own lives. A bittersweet story.

Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1999

ISBN: 0-375-40408-2

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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