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LIFE AL DENTE

LAUGHTER AND LOVE IN AN ITALIAN-AMERICAN FAMILY

A rare and refreshing tribute to a happy and wonderfully exuberant family.

Italian-American Cascone (Mother’s Little Helper, 1986, etc.) pays affectionate tribute to her heritage as she recalls growing up among relatives determined to live life con brio.

In chapters that chronicle the various highlights of her youth, the author begins by recalling how her father adjusted to her being a girl. Though this successful lawyer had expected his firstborn to be a son, he soon decided that even a daughter should not grow up to be one of those “silly ladies.” He taught Cascone to stand up for herself, fight back when attacked, and never to back down. When the boys no longer allowed her to join their baseball games, her father taught her pool. Soon, to his delight, she was not only beating the local adolescent males but her father’s friends too. When a neighbor complained that Gina was playing pool for money, her mother initially forbid her to “hustle,” but upon learning that she was actually beating the men encouraged her to “clean them out.” Cascone recalls her reluctant move from their friendly city neighborhood to a big, new house in the less welcoming suburbs. Daddy sent her to a WASP prep school; her classmates ignored her until they saw her family at a school play and rumors began to circulate that they belonged to the Mafia. Cascone, deciding she might as well be a mob princess, played the role to the hilt. She recalls other memorable episodes: the Christmas her father resolved to have eels for dinner and stored them, alive, in the bathtub; their sentimental visit to Italy, where every meal seemed a celebration; her first encounter with the WASP Prince Charming she eventually married, though never sure whether it was her or the food that kept him coming back.

A rare and refreshing tribute to a happy and wonderfully exuberant family.

Pub Date: July 22, 2003

ISBN: 0-7434-5328-X

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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