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CASTRO'S DAUGHTER

Name: CASTRO'S DAUGHTER
Author: Alina Fernández
ISBN: 0-312-19308-4

AN EXILE'S MEMOIR OF CUBA

by Alina Fernández ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1998

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Fidel’s illegitimate offspring informs the waiting world that the Cuban dictator is not an especially cuddly fellow. Fernandez, now living in exile in Spain, recounts with a relentlessly thumb-in-mouth attitude her years of growing up in revolutionary Cuba. Her —characters— number not only Marxist heavies like Raul Castro and Che Guevara (who —looked like a big frog,— and who sired an illegitimate daughter of his own with —a pair of prize-winning boobs—), but also elves, gnomes, and sprites. In the hands of Gabriel Garc°a M†rquez, the bow to magical realism might have worked. But in this young woman’s coming-of-age tale, the approach proves irretrievably cloying. Fernandez dishes plenty of dirt about her famous father, who was in no hurry to acknowledge her publicly, but who made sure she was blessed with a steady supply of Barbie dolls, chauffeured cars, and well-situated beaux. Some of the dirt here: Castro was once married to the daughter of a high official in the Batista dictatorship, a union that allowed him to receive a lenient sentence after his guerrilla band’s ill-fated assault on Santiago, in which —many of his men died or suffered torture, while Fidel had not even a single scratch.— A little more: His Highness liked to swim—but only after the beaches had been cleared of any other bathers. And then, gulps Fernandez, Castro didn—t approve of her frequent and disastrous marriages and love interests. Another item: He dispatched tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers, including some of her boyfriends, to die pointlessly in Angola. To punish her distant father, preoccupied with the business of spreading revolution and staving off Yanqui imperialism, Fernandez became a fashion model—and famine-stricken Cuba’s only voluntary anorexic. Fidel must have been relieved when his daughter left town. Readers who brave her whines will feel that the book ends not a page too soon. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-312-19308-4

Page Count: 272

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)