A thoughtful recollection about the rejuvenating power of unconventional choices.
A debut memoir recounts a man’s retreat from “mainstream” life in search of his true self.
In 2006, Malone made a fateful decision. He unceremoniously quit his job, ditched his apartment, and spent the bulk of his limited life savings on a 1976 Dodge van. His intention was to live in it and follow his lifelong dream of finding meditative solace in a simpler, less cluttered existence. He quickly discovered that he needed to make some money and become more resourceful, so he started selling his blood plasma to a local clinic, learned the fine art of dumpster diving, and even took a three-day course designed to teach college students basic survival skills in the wild. Malone received a modest inheritance after his father died in 2006, and he used this money to buy a used car and drive across the United States; he also traveled to England, Ireland, and France. Over the course of his adventures off the grid, he reflected deeply on the fallout of an acrimonious divorce, and he made a decision to give full custody of his two children to his wife. He also wrestled with memories of abuse he suffered at the hands of both parents, his father’s emotionally corrosive alcoholism, and the way that both of these things fueled his own struggle with drug addiction. The remembrance is dotted with illustrative references to literature, culling wisdom from the likes of authors such as Jack Kerouac, René Descartes, and Henry David Thoreau. The author’s prose is informally anecdotal, although in spots it employs a more refined, even elegant style: “As proud as I was to have time and again assembled the audacity and the daringness to answer the call to adventure and to leave the common world behind, my adventures had always felt truncated, had always left me feeling a little embarrassed, a little like I hadn’t really possessed the endurance or the determination to complete the mission.” Malone is also bracingly forthcoming, candidly appraising his own shortcomings and courageously attempting to learn something of value from them. However, the author can sometimes take unusual narrative detours; for example, he tells of buying a gun in order to see if possessing it would influence his thoughts on gun-control policy. Also, the book veers into anodyne self-help–book formulas at times, waxing philosophical about the power of smiling, for instance, or about looking into the mirror to give oneself permission to cry. The idea of going on a vision quest also seems uninspired and shopworn, and it sometimes seems as if the author is checking things off a clipboard of spiritually meaningful diversions. It’s often hard to tell the difference between moments of spiritually intense sequestration and escapist hermitage, but Malone is well-aware of that issue and intelligently comments upon it. Overall, this memoir’s emotional depth more than compensates for its excesses, and the author shows considerable bravery in squarely confronting long-ago trauma in its pages.
A thoughtful recollection about the rejuvenating power of unconventional choices.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 237
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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