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THEY ARE MY CHILDREN, TOO

A MOTHER'S STRUGGLE FOR HER SONS

Two young boys abducted by their father, their mother unable to visit or telephone, the courts delaying custody or visitation decisions as years pass—it’s a horror story. With divorce rates remaining high, tales such as this one grow more common. Separated from her husband, the author lived with her sons in England, their father in Germany. The two boys visited him regularly during school holidays, and Meyer gloried in the idea that her sons would be Euro-children, fluent in three languages (English, French, German) and comfortable on or off the Continent. In the summer of 1994, the boys headed for a scheduled vacation with their father and never returned. They live today in Germany with him and his extended family, who used the authority of local courts to override international agreements regarding abducted children. Why? The boys were discriminated against in England and taunted as “Nazi,” the relatives charged; they also claimed that while Meyer worked she left her sons in the care of strangers. She disproved all the accusations, but not to the satisfaction of Germany’s courts, which give weight to children’s preferences. Meyer’s sons, although only nine and seven years old, “expressed a strong desire” to be German—Meyer believes because they had been manipulated by their father and taught to hate her. When her German and English lawyers could do no more, she pursued her case in the British Parliament, the French Cabinet, and finally through the media in England and France, where a version of this book first appeared. She also joined international activist groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Now married to the British ambassador to the US, she is able to speak to her children by telephone occasionally but has not been allowed to visit. A somewhat hysterical tone weakens Meyer’s arguments, but overall this is an eye-opener regarding the international swamp that can turn Euro-parents into bureaucratic victims. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen.

Pub Date: May 7, 1999

ISBN: 1-891620-15-0

Page Count: 352

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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

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