An elegant sense of place, an emotive story of great vulnerability, and a wonderful gift from mother to daughter.
An intimate, everyday portrait of a river city in China, where Prager (Eve’s Tattoo, 1991, etc.) adopted her daughter and later returned with her to gather impressions and information before the place underwent the tides of change.
Prager, a novelist and humor writer, adopted Lulu from the city of Wuhu in southern China in late 1994. Lulu had been abandoned by her parents for reasons unknown, and Prager wanted to see the orphanage where Lulu spent her first seven months and learn whether there were any documents that might shed some light on her daughter’s early life. “I’m a modest person,” declares the author, “a humorist who’s scared of feeling,” and that is part of what gives her account such charm: She was forced to address profound feelings, and while she never shied away, she was also never glib, searching for words in a way that is sometimes rough but always sincere. While Prager describes the city as she and Lulu go about getting to know the place—they stayed for about six weeks, and the book is structured like an extended diary—she must also explain to five-year-old Lulu what exactly they are doing there—indeed, what it means to be adopted. This aspect of the story weaves itself around other experiences, visiting old tea houses and rock gardens and parks, struggling with bureaucrats and party members, coming across an outdoor park “where about twenty middle-aged couples are ballroom dancing to Chinese pop music emanating from the old Maoist PA speakers,” and even more PAs spout Paul Robeson’s “Old Man River” during a trip to the zoo. NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Kosovo while they were in town, so their journey was truncated, although not before their snapshot of Wuhu, stolen out of time, was secure.
An elegant sense of place, an emotive story of great vulnerability, and a wonderful gift from mother to daughter.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-50349-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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