A successful anesthesiologist commits to writing a letter every day to his best and longest friend after learning that she had been recovering from brain surgery.
In his brief introduction to this epistolary collection, Boggs explains his project as an attempt to stimulate his friend’s brain by amusing her with “stories, some funny, some bittersweet, about what the years had done to me since we had spent all of our days together from elementary through high school.” Peppered with poems, illustrations and quotes from people like Oscar Wilde and Rodney Dangerfield, every letter ranges between two and five pages and is generally a thoughtful, personal exploration of Boggs’ present goings-on or whatever topic happens to be on his mind. In letters dated between mid-March to early May 2009, Boggs recounts personal anecdotes and intimate memories about his childhood in Albuquerque, medical school in Chicago, trips to Istanbul and Mexico City and, among other places, working temporarily in Greenville, Miss., from where he wrote a number of the letters. But mostly he writes about small-town life in Gaffney, S.C., where he and his family lived for 20 years, recounting the mayor, whom everyone called "Chicken Jolly," and the various men who have shamelessly hit on his wife. Each letter functions as an almost-essay, a highly personal exercise in memory and creativity, but collectively form something more akin to a memoir, in which he exposes his passion for Latino dance music and ’70s rock album cover art, the history of vehicles he’s owned, the stories of old girlfriends, his Buddhist-leaning protestant faith and the surprising ease of sending his second daughter off to school after the difficulty of sending his first. At times strikingly insightful and often quite witty, Boggs writes with impressive consistency, sometimes openly battling writers’ block and winning every time. Most readers will find Boggs’ resulting meandering to be enjoyable, while others will likely want more structure or depth from his musings, such as his criticism of the Google era, where he fails to go beyond lamenting that “there is something wonderful about the open-endedness of not knowing everything.” Rather than offering insight into the makings of an intimate friendship, Boggs emphasizes the results of his friendship with Dinah, one that serves as a platform for illuminating nostalgia, nonromantic love and storytelling. A sincere, original tribute to the art of letter writing, small-town living and friendship.
Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463442873
Page Count: 212
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
