An inspirational and illuminating exploration of a golf metaphor.
A physical therapist compares his life to a round of golf to determine his score in this debut motivational memoir.
The legendary Ben Hogan once likened life to golf: “As you walk down the fairways of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.” Huu, a golf enthusiast, takes Hogan’s metaphor further, breaking the 80-plus-year human life into 18 holes and assigning them each a par. “What kind of round have you had so far?” asks the author. “And most importantly, how are you going to finish out this round, the one and only precious one that’s been given to you in this one life that you have to live?” Using his own life as an example, Huu offers an analysis of how the rules of golf overlay neatly onto the experience of growing up and meeting challenges. From losing two balls right at the beginning of the game (the death of his father and his family’s escape from Vietnam) to securing his first birdie (proposing to his wife) to some unlucky shots (like having his business destroyed by Hurricane Katrina), Huu proves that most “holes” in life are a mixed bag. All readers can do is add up their strokes, learn from their mistakes, and try to make up for it on the back nine. Huu writes in a cheerful, self-deprecating prose that easily synchronizes the languages of golf and autobiography: “Because of wonderful people like them during this rough period in my life, I will generously give myself a lucky two-putt from here, to close out the hole with a humbling score of only a double bogey, 6.” For those who don’t know the game well, the author takes time at the beginning to explain the rules and scoring system. For those to whom this sounds like an intellectual exercise taken too far, Huu’s system is actually quite revelatory. The book is perhaps oversaturated with quotes by author Tony Robbins and the like, and certain chapters of Huu’s life are more intriguing than others. But his call to play less conservatively and practice mindfulness is good advice for “golfers” of any age.
An inspirational and illuminating exploration of a golf metaphor.Pub Date: May 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4808-6051-3
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 22, 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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