One woman’s quest for the meaning of living beyond her means—a middling memoir.
A study in how compulsive acquisition can lead to untold loss.
Cardella exposes the self-destructive shopaholic tendencies that plagued her throughout early adulthood. Captivated at a young age by the allure of the fashion world depicted in the pages of Vogue, as well as her mother’s glamorous sense of style, the author writes that she first looked to fashion as a mode of self-expression. But soon after her mother’s death in 1989, that expression morphed into self-destructive behavior as Cardella began shopping compulsively, using the physical rush derived from buying clothes and accessories to fill a gaping emotional void. With the eerie intensity of a junkie getting a fix, the author recounts in encyclopedic detail garments worn on pivotal occasions, the arresting pleasure of shopping at exclusive boutiques—“Having a handbag placed in a special silk or flannel sack gave me a secret thrill, and seeing a simple white blouse disappear in a cloud of brightly colored tissue paper was as mesmerizing as a magic trick”—even the sensual appeal of closet hangers holding up her evening gowns: “There were hangers entwined in beautiful pale pink satin, looking as delicate as a ballerina’s toe shoes; hangers that came with their own pearl-tipped push pins with which the thinnest of spaghetti straps could be secured.” Not surprisingly, Cardella’s attempts to heal deep psychological wounds with surface balms led to a string of failed relationships and serious financial woes before she somehow righted the ship. While this confession admirably avoids self-help territory, it reads more like a self-indulgent exercise in retrospection than a serious inquiry into the causes of the author’s affliction.
One woman’s quest for the meaning of living beyond her means—a middling memoir.Pub Date: May 14, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-03560-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
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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