Quirky and intriguing, this story of bicultural life and familial ruptures transcends the particulars of Meston’s own...
A memoir recounting a 1960s fantasy—and nightmare—come to life.
Meston was born in Switzerland to “wanderlust hippies” who had changed their last name from Greenberg to the more poetic Greeneye. Though his mother had always claimed that she didn’t want children, Feather Greeneye took one look at her baby son and tearfully declared that she was thrilled to have “someone to love completely.” It didn’t turn out that way. Enamored of the teachings of Indian spiritual master Meher Baba, Meston’s parents moved their small family to Dharamsala. Meston was left in the care of a Tibetan family while his parents spent a month meditating under the tutelage of Lama Zopa Rinpoche. During that month, Meston’s father “snapped,” and his mother decided to become a Buddhist nun. On the advice of a Lama, Meston’s mother left him for good with a Tibetan family; she embraced her new monastic vocation, and promised she would visit when she could. At age six, Meston was sent to a monastery where he would begin training as a Buddhist monk. The author offers a generous reading of his mother’s strange—arguably negligent—choice: She didn’t want her son to have the same superficial childhood she’d had in the United States, and thought Buddhist monasticism would provide him with meaning. Eventually, as a teenager, Meston went to the U.S. to attend high school. The culture shock he experienced is both funny and pathetic. The concluding chapters’ chronicle of the author’s adult years is a tad less engrossing. Eventually, he went to college, reconciled with his mother and, with his wife, opened a boutique that specializes in Indian fabrics.
Quirky and intriguing, this story of bicultural life and familial ruptures transcends the particulars of Meston’s own autobiography.Pub Date: March 6, 2007
ISBN: 0-7432-8747-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
