A colorful, faith-based memoir of recovery.
In his debut memoir, Cole recounts his struggles with eating disorders, substance abuse, and mental illness.
Even in childhood, Cole had problems: overweight, asthmatic, and a chronic bed-wetter, he was picked on at school and performed poorly in gym class. Though his parents were attentive and loving, Cole grew up feeling cursed “that God had made a mistake, that [his] body was an accident.” Beginning with an addictive relationship to junk food, he made his way through periods of infatuation with dieting, God, penis enlargement, and recreational drugs before landing in rehab for alcoholism while still in high school. Yet none of that was as bad as his first psychotic episode: at 18, while a freshman at the University of Georgia, Cole became convinced that he was Jesus Christ and attempted to perform miracles, believing that his arresting officers were leading him to his own crucifixion. Cole’s yearslong path to a stable life was a maze of denial, confusion, relapse, and recovery, though it was one that ultimately led to a place of health, love, and faith. Now a life coach, the author hopes his story may offer guidance for those who have suffered similarly. Addiction, disordered eating, and manic depression are each, by themselves, tremendous hurdles, and the mere fact that Cole has weathered all three makes his account remarkable. His tone is open and accessible, though he often allows his prose to drift toward melodrama. Describing a friend’s funeral, at which the Beatles’ “Let It Be” played, Cole writes, “instead of ‘words of wisdom,’ all I heard were words of confusion.” The complexity of Cole’s flaws and the roller coaster of his life (along with his religiosity, which manifests in ways that are both harmful and benign) create a unique, compelling narrative. Readers may not reach the same conclusions about life that Cole does, but chances are good that they will walk away from this book with at least a pinch of awe.
A colorful, faith-based memoir of recovery.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-941758-14-4
Page Count: 237
Publisher: Inkshares
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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.
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
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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