A thoroughly light and entertaining memoir.
Fashion maven Kelly (Freakin’ Fabulous on a Budget, 2013, etc.) is more booster than basher in this collection of mostly autobiographical essays about his life on- and off-screen.
At one point late in his amiable memoir, the author, moderator of The Chew and former co-host of What Not to Wear, warns a group of graduating high school kids to “dump the fucking assholes” in their lives. That succinct yet salient exhortation sums up Kelly’s approach to life, both personal and professional. Whether chasing a lucrative career in media or a handsome suitor at the end of the bar, the former Long Island dork who always found fitting in difficult emphasizes his ongoing quest for common decency. Those wishing for a scathing takedown of the TV show he co-hosted with Stacy London for 10 years on TLC will be sorely disappointed. The most caustic Kelly gets on that score is when he concedes that he and the stylish London were like combining baking soda and vinegar: “after the fun part fizzles out, you’re left with a puddle of nothing in particular.” Southern-fried food guru Paula Deen earns a lot more of Kelly’s ire, but only after comparing him to “a turd in the punchbowl” during a live-to-tape broadcast. Usually taking the high road, Kelly recounts past love affairs, run-ins with rude diners, and correspondence from unfavorable viewers with equal, levelheaded aplomb. Kelly also displays a keen sense of slapstick comedy, hilariously portraying the time a trip to the mud baths with an old pal turned into a desperate rescue operation requiring the two childhood friends to see each other naked for the first time: “One might think I deserved a heartfelt thank-you from my oldest friend in the world. Instead, Lisa—covered in so much mud that only the whites of her eyes resembled human tissue—asked: ‘Do your balls always hang that low?’ ”
A thoroughly light and entertaining memoir.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7693-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
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
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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