Largely small talk in a small book produces lighter reading than intended.
A Parisian city mouse listens to a garrulous country mouth and transcribes the philosophy he hears.
Cueco is a writer and an artist (take his word for the art; his book is presented sans illustrations). He has a place somewhere in the countryside where the garden is lovingly tended by a wise retired railwayman, seemingly of a certain age. The writer acts as knowing and sensitive interlocutor. His text is a record of the gardener’s yeomanly profundities—all founded on the most quotidian stuff. There are reports of the man’s journey to the rainy seaside and of his bad teeth, of beautiful courgettes, pesky moles and manure. He finds beauty in a cabbage.The gardener—one Frenchman who will not drink wine—subsists, it appears, largely on kippers and soup. For comic effect, on a visit to Paris he brings an anvil. (It’s to sharpen a scythe, he says, to further comic effect). His advice: Always carry a piece of string in your pocket. And a knife. On travel: The Algerian desert is “nothing but sand.” A bit of folk wisdom: “With a hat, you’ve got shade wherever you are.” Theology: “He was a good bloke, that Jesus.” Getting bored yet? There’s more palaver about gravel, a new red scooter and whether socks are comfortable inside the old man’s muddy wellies. (The book, translated from the French, contains British-isms like “buggers,” “gobsmacking,” “knackers.”) The lackadaisical tone is eventually offset a bit with reports of illnesses, a trip to spruce up some gravesites and getting up close and personal with soil. Note, students, there’s some foreshadowing going on. The book finally achieves an elegiac mode to conclude its transcript of banalities that reach for depth without much success.
Largely small talk in a small book produces lighter reading than intended.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2006
ISBN: 1-86207-840-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Granta UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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