Written at a fever pitch, this valuable memoir is not about whining as much as it is about surviving paternal insanity.
Surrealistically graphic memoir of a childhood dominated by a violently abusive father and timid mother.
Though childhood-abuse memoirs are abundant, Anderson’s is distinct in its minute descriptions of the intense physical and psychological torture he endured, which his helpless mother witnessed. Inspired by a letter he received from his mother asking about her and her husband’s parenting faults, Anderson lays out more than 60 specific incidents, most committed by his father. They range from somewhat insensitive (as a teen he was limited to watching only G-rated films) to shockingly violent. These disturbing accounts include house-wrecking wrestling matches, stealing money their son earned at his after-school jobs, threats to stop him from attending public school despite his superior grades, control of all his possessions except a comb, pen and an empty wallet, and rituals of sexual humiliation. One of six siblings in a family ruled by a tyrannical ex-military officer and his second wife, Anderson paints a harrowing portrait of the deleterious effects of dysfunctional parenting. He experienced brief respites when he was allowed to live for weeks with his older brother’s family and the family of his best friend. Both of these households offered to let him complete his adolescence in their loving homes, but Anderson was afraid to accept due to his fear of his father’s wrath. Written as one long accusation, there are tedious stretches where the reader can readily predict the father’s next outrage against his son. Yet Allen provides italicized patches of self-talk steeped in thick irony and sardonic comedy, with scenarios and stock phrases lifted from gangster films or spy thrillers.
Written at a fever pitch, this valuable memoir is not about whining as much as it is about surviving paternal insanity.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-1453785010
Page Count: 392
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2012
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
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
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