Life coach and inspirational speaker Maddigan tells Laura Gilbert’s story—an unlikely triumph over abuse, addiction and despair.
Gilbert’s childhood was so bleak that it’s tempting to compare her to one of Charles Dickens’ abused, impoverished urchins; born to an alcoholic, pill-popping mother (father unknown), young Laura—nicknamed Squeaks by one of her mother’s boyfriends—endured her tender years in squalid hotel rooms in the slums of 1960s Vancouver. It was a world of rats and filth, brawls and bacchanals. Her mother existed in a state of stupefaction or rage, leaving Laura unfed, unwashed and unschooled. Often abandoned for days on end, Laura stole to eat and her only companions were street pigeons and a stuffed panda. Occasional rescues by social services—plus the good will of neighbors, a church lady, Laura’s loving grandmother and a girlfriend or two—provided temporary relief and much-needed meals, but never a permanent home, ultimately leaving Laura at her mother’s mercy once more. She soon learned to fight back, at one point stabbing her mother in self-defense. Neglect and mistreatment planted their seeds, and booze, drugs and men eventually seduced Laura as they had her mother, with predictable results. At 18, Laura shared her mother’s helplessness—“[W]e both felt like our lives were a prison sentence.” As Laura becomes a mother, then a wife, her alcoholism grows acute and her self-destructive nature erupts. The cycle of drinking, regret, shame and drinking again will be familiar to anyone who has battled addictions or witnessed their destructive path through families. Maddigan writes convincingly in Laura’s voice, though at times the language feels too casual and naïve for the more sordid episodes. And while Laura’s plight is moving, the litany of her misfortunes may exhaust some readers’ sympathies. A careful proofreading would have helped as well. Fortunately the sun finally shines in this dark book that culminates in a series of personal testaments—and a reprise of earlier characters—revealing how an unwanted, troubled girl learned to cherish and heal herself. A journey from squalor to wholeness, occasionally tiring but ultimately uplifting.
Pub Date: May 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456754068
Page Count: 333
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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
© 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.
bookshelf
