Sure to be a hit with romantically challenged readers, though neither as clever nor comical as, the fictional Bridget saga...
New York Post columnist Harrison works over her love life in a predictable memoir.
Moving from London to New York to take a newspaper job, the British singleton had trouble getting the hang of hardcore reporting. Asking people to spill their guts about, say, the recent murder of their uncle felt uncouth and invasive. Luckily, Harrison fell into writing a column about her desperate attempts to meet a man in Manhattan, where women between 20 and 49 outnumber their male contemporaries by about half a million. She went on blind dates and speed dates. She wrestled with the question of how often to call a guy she liked, whether or not to snog in the first five minutes of a date and whether Banana Republic’s stretchy couture was “subtle-yet-sexy” or “way too tacky for a first date.” Meanwhile, she was carrying a torch for her boss, Jack. Lo and behold, it turned out he was pining for her too, and the lovebirds finally got together. A serious relationship has just as much drama as a bunch of bad blind dates, Harrison demonstrates; after all, she was ensnared in an office romance, and her job was to chronicle her romantic adventures in the newspaper edited by her new honey. Things with Jack eventually fizzled, of course. Next came a wealthy banker, but he thought she took him for granted and ultimately gave her the boot. Harrison throws in the requisite, if uninspired, chapter on 9/11, and the familiar props of chick-lit are here in spades: endless hand-wringing about being too old to snag a guy or conceive a child, references to Manolo Blahniks and Sarah Jessica Parker, plus enough alcohol to float a small yacht.
Sure to be a hit with romantically challenged readers, though neither as clever nor comical as, the fictional Bridget saga that doubtless inspired it.Pub Date: June 30, 2006
ISBN: 0-7382-1044-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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