An overwrought account of a churchman's daily life, written by an English teacher who serves as ``lay vicar'' of a small Vermont parish. Keizer seems to be a likeable and earnest young man; he is certainly guileless. We are given, at the start, an extremely meticulous account of the undefined yearnings that led him first to consider, then to reject, the vocation of an Anglican priest. He chose instead to become a schoolteacher and accepted a post in the ``Northeast Kingdom,'' a remote area of upper Vermont. His religious convictions remained strong, however, and he became deeply involved in the activities of his local parish—so much so that he was asked to assume leadership of it when the pastor retired. It is obvious that Keizer was the right man for the job- -his love for his work and his parishioners is proclaimed on nearly every page—but once this much has been established, he seems to have very little to say. His ordinary routine of prayer and work (Sunday services, visits to the sick, committee meetings) is duly set forth, but it is hard to see the drama that Keizer imputes to these events. Basically, this is a story that we have heard many times before: It takes all kinds; most people are decent; many are unhappy; quite a few are confused; and some are just no good. Keizer's fond excitement, while undoubtedly sincere, seems out of all proportion, and his apocalyptic prose—a monastery chapel, for instance, is described as ``a fragment of Eden full of possibilities in which one vaguely heard a serpentine hissing''- -doesn't help matters along very much. Well intentioned but bland. Instead of strip-mining his life for morals and epiphanies, Keizer would have done better to let events speak for themselves.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-670-82723-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1991
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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