An ebullient portrait of a marriage.
A chronicle of love, humor, and creativity.
In 1995, at a gathering of the Southern Voices Literary Conference, Conroy (The Same Sweet Girls’ Guide to Life: Advice From a Failed Southern Belle, 2014, etc.) first met an author she deeply admired: Pat Conroy (1945-2016), whose 1986 novel, The Prince of Tides, had been a bestseller and was made into an Oscar-nominated movie. An “imposing and vibrant presence,” he exuded “an undeniable aura of magnetism and charm.” With her first novel due to come out, she was floored when he offered to provide a blurb and amazed a short time later when he called her—and kept calling her for the next two years. When he finally suggested that they meet in person, both felt as if they were old friends, and their relationship evolved into a love affair and, in 1998, marriage. The author brings her talents as a storyteller to a warm, candid memoir of their years together, ending with Pat’s death from cancer. When they first met, the author, recently divorced, was emerging from severe depression. Living alone in a studio apartment, she barely supported herself and her sons with various teaching jobs, trying to eke out time to write. Pat was divorced, too, although usually entangled in affairs; and he, too, had been left “depleted, despondent, and hollow-eyed with despair” after his last marriage ended. “I need someone to rescue me for a change,” Pat told her. She was buoyed by his humor and emotional generosity, though as she came to know him, she realized that he was “a complicated man who [hid] his deepest feelings behind a devil-may-care demeanor.” They nurtured each other’s creativity, publishing five books during their time together, and Pat pushed her to go on book tours to publicize her work. The author recounts in lively detail the stresses and joys of daily life: family gatherings, Pat’s recurring health problems, and their mutual love of the South Carolina marshland.
An ebullient portrait of a marriage.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-290562-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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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