If the story sounds appealing, go see the movie.
A portrait of the writer as a hapless criminal.
Borsuk’s decent command of his material is at odds with the protagonist’s cluelessness, which itself seems odd because the author and protagonist are one and the same. The narrative gives no indication of the distance between the two, only that the events described took place when the author was 19, on the verge of dropping out of college, and hanging out with two friends who had become even less anchored than he was. Their house served as a central gathering place and crash pad, where Warren (no last names) liked to get naked when the party was in full swing. Amid the alcohol-and-pot–induced haze, Warren enlisted the author and their other friend, Spencer, to steal rare books and artwork from a university library. Paranoid from the pot, Spencer believed Warren and the author were planning to murder him. In terms of pacing and character development, the author is mostly in control of these out-of-control conspirators. Warren, we learn, is “a weasel-like creature, agile, hard to pin down,” something of a scam artist, who may or may not have been responsible for some of Borsuk’s disappearing funds. The author had long planned to join the FBI, as his uncle had, until college, when he “suddenly found myself on the opposite side of the law, immersed in a life of crime for no apparent reason.” Judging by the narrative, a tie-in to the film of the same name, Borsuk didn’t even believe it as he was immersed in it, helping plot a robbery that he didn’t think would happen. Then he found himself doing what he thought he never would, tying up an elderly librarian, whose screams continue to haunt him, as they made their escape from the library. The caper fell apart, and so does the narrative, as the three try to figure out what comes next.
If the story sounds appealing, go see the movie.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68442-450-4
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Turner
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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
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