Entertaining reading to dip into now and then.
A British fiction writer humorously chronicles the quotidian frustrations, discomforts, and outright failures he faced over the course of one year.
In this sometimes-scattershot but often hilarious collection, McGowan (Rook, 2017, etc.) recounts the details of his life as a husband, father, and North London writer. Organized as a series of titled journal entries, the narrative explores the strangeness and banality of everyday life and, in particular, its often laughable embarrassments. In “I Love You,” the author describes the unusual events that led him to accidentally put a banana on which he’d written “I love you” in front of a man sitting near him at the British Library. His eye ever on the bizarre, McGowan also tells the story of encountering his double in a dwarf who “propelled himself with crutches along the pavement, at high speed” and seemed to exist to offer the author a “cryptic message” he never actually delivered. In reflecting on his career as a writer, he recalls an interview he did with Anthony Burgess that “went like a dream” but ended in disaster when he later realized he had failed to turn on his tape recorder. McGowan’s family life is a rich source of material for his entries. Whether he is recounting his neighborhood adventures with Monty, a “dog blessed more with irascibility than intelligence,” musing at how he ever could have ended up with as sensible, successful, and beautiful a wife as his “Mrs. McG,” or wondering at the softness of his M&S woolen socks and whether they make him too “content with the state of the world,” McGowan always brings a quirky and refreshing perspective. Though the meandering plotlessness becomes irksome, the author’s delight in unearthing the overlooked pain points of everyday life and laughing at them makes up for the fractured, willy-nilly nature of the narrative.
Entertaining reading to dip into now and then.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78607-182-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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