The urgency and desperation of addiction told through crisp, biting sarcasm and self-deprecating humor.
A stand-up comedian reclaims her life after three decades of alcohol abuse.
Though Los Angeles–based comic and animated sketch writer Tozer’s wryly dramatic debut memoir is steeped with snarky one-liners, there is also angst, regret, and reflective relief lurking just behind her wisecracking wit. She writes of growing up in Pueblo, Colorado, a place with little to do but “breed and drink, so that’s what everyone does.” This sense of boredom was only exacerbated by the family-owned barroom business, alcoholic relatives, and a “working warrior” mother who swiftly divorced Tozer’s depressive father. Cute, crudely drawn stick-figure illustrations escort readers through the author’s life beyond puberty into the summer of 1989, with the edgy temptations of binge drinking and boys and a true scare after her baby sister was almost killed by a drunk driver. Even a college basketball scholarship was an insufficient distraction as Tozer began showing up drunk to night classes. An impulsive, ill-fated move to New York City, followed by dead-end jobs and more drinking and blackouts, only moved her closer to rock bottom, “like one of those steps you take right into a pile of dog shit, but you don’t realize it until you get home.” The author perused comedy clubs and then dove headlong into the craft with classes and live stand-up attempts, yet her relationships with family, friends, and a dysfunctional love affair continued to suffer. When her calamitous hangover stories translated into effective comedy, a Hollywood producer expressed interest, and the author moved west. Tozer’s memoir becomes reflective in the closing chapters as she remarks on her hard-won recovery and how it’s changed her life, career, and family relationships. Her journey reflects the seriousness of her alcoholism with both personal responsibility and a resilient spirit.
The urgency and desperation of addiction told through crisp, biting sarcasm and self-deprecating humor.Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7624-5972-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Running Press
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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
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