A father tells timeless, funny, and honest stories of raising boys.
A father shares stories of his childhood and those of his two sons.
McGlynn (A Door in the Ocean, 2012, etc.) was not expecting to become a father when he did. When he and his wife found out their first child was on the way, he gulped nervously and moved into the role with a mixture of trepidation and elation. The author gathers tales of his two young sons and of his own childhood into an entertaining, humorous, and enlightening series of essays on fatherhood. Readers learn of his longing for his father, who divorced his mother and moved away when the author was 12. Suddenly, his father’s physical presence was reduced to a few weeks during the year, so McGlynn learned snippets of wisdom on growing into adulthood over the telephone, a touching memory of a pre-digital era. The author also shares moments of pride: watching his son at his first swim meet, supporting him at basketball games, and seeing him use the author’s old skateboard. McGlynn doesn’t ignore his struggles with his children: trying to discipline them when they used profanity, told their classmates that Santa was dead, or would not go to sleep at night. Throughout, the author’s love for his children is palpable, as is his feeling of achievement at having done the best that he could regardless of the situation. He and his wife have favored a smaller home in order to have more money for travel, giving up material goods for the chance to create lasting memories with their children, and he hopes they appreciate that approach as they grow into adults and have their own children. Overall, the book is neither shallow nor profound but a pleasing blend of humor and humility that shows what it means to be a father in America today.
A father tells timeless, funny, and honest stories of raising boys.Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64009-039-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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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