An animated, if overlong, memoir of growing up in the South.
Elks (Journeys Along the Quiet Path, 2002) recounts her childhood in the Pamlico Sound region of North Carolina in this memoir.
The author writes that she likes to say she was named for 1960's Hurricane Donna, although that isn’t exactly true; when it comes to personal and family lore, she admits, she often opts for the most interesting version of a story. Born the middle child of teenage parents, Elks grew up in eastern North Carolina in the 1970s. She recounts memorable incidents of her early childhood (making mud pies, tormenting her siblings) and the strong personalities in her immediate and extended family. Everything seemed like an adventure, she writes—even her family’s house burning down in an accidental fire. As Elks grew, however, she says that she began to learn about the darker side of life, such as her carpenter father’s slow descent into alcoholism: “I know, I know...alcoholism is a disease,” Elks told her sister Wendy. “But isn’t it time he got the doctor to help him get better?” The author had to find a way to reconcile her positive, “magical” way of looking at the world with the multiplying disappointments that came with growing up. Elks writes in a colorful, conversational prose that showcases the grit and charm of the book’s rural Southern setting. For example, here’s her description of her grandmother's cooking collard greens: “They took many hours of preparation and tending to, so she made a big batch when she made any at all. She had gotten used to cooking for nine head of young’uns, so I guess old habits die hard.” The book feels a bit bloated at nearly 400 pages, particularly as many short chapters are simply episodic (and underwhelming) vignettes. The relationships between Elks and the various members of her family are well-drawn, however, and the deep affection that she feels for both the setting and the characters can be infectious at times. There are many, many memoirs about the toll that addiction takes on families, but Elks’ spunk and optimism help this one stand slightly above the crowd.
An animated, if overlong, memoir of growing up in the South.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5462-1187-7
Page Count: 386
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
© 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
