by Dirk Hayhurst ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2012
Extraordinary experiences rendered in mostly ordinary prose.
The journeyman pitcher/author of The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran (2010) returns with an account of his struggles to reach and succeed in the Major Leagues—and to find true love.
Hayhurst declares in an author’s note that he’s not interested in writing about “dirty laundry,” but there’s plenty of it on display. He offers grim portrayals of his father, mother and brother, as well as a dark portrait of a fellow minor-league pitcher he calls “Dallas,” who is, in a word, an asshole. Other characters also appear with various warts and imperfections—managers, pitching coaches, veterans who love to haze and others. About the only person who comes off consistently well is the author’s fiancée, Bonnie, whom he marries near the end. Hayhurst occasionally says some bad things and has a few locker-room tantrums, but for the most part he’s the Good Guy on a Quest. Early on he indicates his strong religious beliefs, but they don’t appear much thereafter—oddly, not even during the painful period when he first pitched for the Padres, couldn’t find the plate and lost his confidence. The author also makes an enormous demand on reader credulity when he reports everything in pages of verbatim dialogue with characters speaking in full, well-organized paragraphs, even when they’re outraged. And the chapters end with something snappy, as if Neil Simon were whispering suggestions for curtain lines in their ears. Overall, though, Hayhurst creates forward momentum. Despite our reservations about the narrative, we want him to succeed on the mound, to marry well and to live happily ever after.
Extraordinary experiences rendered in mostly ordinary prose.Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8065-3485-5
Page Count: 410
Publisher: Citadel/Kensington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 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
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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