A satisfying journey into the depths of hard-heartedness and the struggle to heal an old wound.
A son's attempt to salvage a relationship with his cocaine-addict father.
New York Times culture reporter Itzkoff (Lads: A Memoir of Manhood, 2004) explores the complications of forgiving a man who may have deserved no second chances. As a boy, the author viewed his father as an ally in the fight against Hebrew School, but he soon realized that these minor heroics did little to make up for his mysterious absences. Though he was unable to discern his father's secret, Itzkoff’s mother revealed the truth: “He's a drug addict, Davey,” she informed him. “He's been addicted to cocaine almost your whole life.” Years passed, though the author continued to struggle to understand his abnormal familial circumstances. While in college, Itzkoff paid a rare visit to his father's office and saw a display of family photos that he deemed incapable of telling the “complete story of a family.” The author’s memoir picks up where the “profoundly untrue” display left off, offering a front-row seat to his father's addiction. Yet despite witnessing his father at his worst—“all that remained in the room were a few rolled-up dollar bills on a nightstand, a glossy porno magazine on the floor, and a frightened old man shivering on the bed, his nostrils cemented shut with a mixture of blood and mucus, his eyelids sealed closed by some bodily fluid whose origins I couldn’t even guess at”—the author also became a drug user, experimenting primarily with marijuana, though he tried cocaine as well. Itzkoff’s sheepish admission of personal guilt removes the possibility of a moral high ground, and to the book's benefit, levels the playing field, allowing both father and son to face their struggles together. The pair attempted to overcome their obstacles by attending joint therapy, utilizing their drug use as common ground for a fresh start. But after the therapy proved unsuccessful, Itzkoff made one final attempt at reconciliation—this time, simply by listening to his father's painful tale from start to finish and beginning the slow work of righting the wrongs of the past.
A satisfying journey into the depths of hard-heartedness and the struggle to heal an old wound.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6572-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
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 2024 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.
