A moving, greatly ruminative, cathartic autobiography.
A child abuse survivor recounts a youth mired in rigid fundamentalist rule and a resultant dysfunctional adulthood.
“I was raised by hippies turned Jesus freaks,” writes author and motivational speaker Finnola of her parents, whose fanatical behavior dramatically changed direction when she was a young girl. Her harrowing debut memoir begins with early recollections of parents who cooked everything from scratch and rummaged through thrift store bins to clothe her and her sister. The family abandoned the Midwest for San Francisco once her parents became staunch followers of what the author describes as an “ecumenical, fundamentalist, charismatic, evangelical Christian cult.” At age 8, she attended her first prayer meeting, and from there, became drowned in religious dogma, apocalyptic beliefs, regular beatings, and constant distress that her sins “made me vile” in God’s sight. She was taught that secular culture was sinful, and was home-schooled in eighth grade. After college, she met and married a closeted gay man, and during their decades-long relationship, she endured cruel degradation, verbal abuse, and misery so extreme she rebelled with excessive smoking, overeating, extramarital affairs, and a barrage of antidepressant medication. Vividly written and often difficult to read, the memoir is a raw, intensive chronicle of a bleak life yet also forms a true testament to the durability of the human spirit and how perseverance and self-love can work wonders and renew a broken soul. Finnola’s 30s and early 40s admittedly became her darkest days as she embraced her “victim identity” and contemplated suicide, even though a spiritual teacher she’d met and a support group helped buoy her. Her betrayal and anger at her duplicitous marriage are palpable and repeatedly addressed. Her ultimate recovery in mind, body, and spirit took many years as the author eventually vanquished her “inner terrorist” and forgave herself enough to begin the arduous journey to rebuild her self-esteem, embrace motherhood to two daughters, and love again. The author is proud to write that she is now “healthy, happy, and whole,” and the book’s subtitle describing Finnola is fitting and suits this epiphanic, unsettling, and still-evolving life story well.
A moving, greatly ruminative, cathartic autobiography.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5043-9656-1
Page Count: 222
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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