An often engaging, if somewhat overlong, memoir.
In this debut memoir, Sacchet recounts his descent into cocaine addiction.
The book begins with a telling incident: the 30-something author walking in the snow with a broken leg in order to buy cocaine. It then backtracks to describe his diagnosis of multiple sclerosis at the age of 23. The symptoms’ unpredictability played a large role in what Sacchet calls his “physical and psychological agony.” A friend “of ill-repute” introduced him to cocaine, and under the sway of another friend, the author began using the drug more and more frequently. Still, he assured himself that he wasn’t a true addict, because “at least I was earning a living.” He began making drug buys in a dangerous neighborhood and driving home high. He never told his wife about his addiction, even after she gave birth to the couple’s son, and he continued to live “a double life.” About one-third of the way through his memoir, the author mentions his childhood diagnosis of Tourette’s syndrome and asserts that self-consciousness caused by the condition propelled him into joining a gang as a teenager. At 35, the author’s neurological problems forced him to stop working, but he continued to use cocaine; finally, after 13 years of addiction, he was arrested while making a drug buy. He was deeply shaken when his wife refused to remain in the marriage—“she was all I had left”—and he vowed never to use drugs again. He trained for less demanding work, got a job and did indeed stop using, realizing that “I couldn’t risk losing more than I had already lost” and that recovery is “just...a decision.” Although this memoir is often perceptive, Sacchet relates some of his teenage escapades at somewhat disproportionate length, including details of street life and drug deals, as well as events in the lives of unsavory friends. Much of this material might have been omitted, and overall, this briskly paced narrative might have been strengthened by some pruning. That said, he powerfully tells of the havoc that cocaine addiction created in his life and his eventual recovery.
An often engaging, if somewhat overlong, memoir.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1492250074
Page Count: 156
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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