by Barbara Robinette Moss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 2004
A vivid picture of the havoc wreaked by alcoholism and poverty and of the true grit require to overcome them.
Further plumbing of the past from memoirist Moss (Change Me Into Zeus’s Daughter, 2000), here recounting her journey out of poverty and efforts to escape an alcoholic heritage.
Moss likens this work to one of her mother’s patchwork quilts, constructed of seemingly separate pieces that together create a pattern. She opens with a bittersweet childhood recollection of earning a nickel pulling weeds out of a neighbor’s sidewalk in Alabama in 1965 and then moves on to her early adulthood. She had two disastrous marriages with controlling, abusive men, bore a child, and finally, at 27, left her parents’ home to study art at the Ringling School of Art & Design in Sarasota, Florida. Struggling to make ends meet and to shape a life for herself and her son, Jason, in Florida and later in Iowa, where she studied art at Drake University, Moss faces the contempt of neighbors when her welfare dependence becomes known. She shows spunk and imagination in dealing with this, and throughout, Moss retains an impressive determination to better her life. But her relationship with another abusive man, this time a mental patient with whom she becomes obsessed, very nearly knocks her off course. Her eyes opened by therapy and by reading Women Who Love Too Much, she eventually comes to understand how having grown up with a frequently drunk and sometimes violent father has harmed her ability to form healthy relationships with men. From time to time, the author returns to Alabama, both in person and in memory, and her Alabama stories are filled with angry, self-destructive men, the women who put up with them, and the children who suffer the consequences. The end, though, is a happy one, with Moss finding love, peace, and security in her third marriage and fulfillment in her work as an artist and writer.
A vivid picture of the havoc wreaked by alcoholism and poverty and of the true grit require to overcome them.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-2945-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
Share your opinion of this book
More by Barbara Robinette Moss
BOOK REVIEW
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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
Share your opinion of this book
by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.