A singularly compelling memoir.
A father finds his life transformed when his son is born with cerebral palsy, as illuminated through this masterfully written memoir.
The structuring of this book, by Venice-based Brazilian author Mainardi, might initially seem overly precious or gimmicky. Each very short section (a paragraph or two, a photo, a drawing) is numbered, with each representing a step taken by the author’s son, Tito, before he inevitably falls. The 424 steps here represent a monumental achievement, for, as the author notes, the “sixteen steps Tito took on 28 September 2005 became, some months later, twenty-seven steps. Some months later, the seven steps became forty-four steps….” Ultimately, the structuring provides a sturdy frame that allows Mainardi to avoid sentimentality or wallowing in grief (or rage at the Venetian hospital that bungled the birth), while showing how the unconditional love the parents have for their son has transformed the author’s world. He connects everything to Tito’s destiny—from the architecture that drew him to the hospital to “Hitler’s ‘euthanasia’ program [that] offered ‘mercy killings’ to those whose lives were ‘worthless’ or ‘not worth living’ ” to Neil Young’s experience with two sons born with cerebral palsy and the music that resulted in such unlikely juxtapositions as, “No one falls better than James Joyce. Apart from Lou Costello.” As the author of four published novels and a column in the Brazilian magazine Veja, Mainardi now thinks of himself: “I am Tito’s father. I exist only because Tito exists.” Tito emerges as collaborator in the book—not as a cause or a type or a symbol but as a happy, well-adjusted, well-loved individual with a life well worth living.
A singularly compelling memoir.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59051-700-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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