A brief, adequate memoir in which the author attempts to decipher his complicated, multilayered childhood in order to...
A French writer takes a close look at his family’s dysfunctional dynamics.
Le Tellier (Eléctrico W, 2013, etc.)—a member of Oulipo, the eccentric French group of writers and mathematicians who seek to create works within constrained writing techniques—places his life under the microscope to examine his childhood and the people and places that affected him throughout his life. He shares intimate and minute details about his great-grandparents, grandparents, father, mother, and stepfather and how each person changed him as he was growing up. Sometimes the changes were subtle, other times more profound, but the author explores each with the advantage of age and wisdom looking back at youth. Le Tellier focuses in particular on his mother and her childhood before moving on to chronicle how she treated him poorly as a young adult and the incredible lies she told him. Much of her behavior was caused by the fact that she was likely “crazy” and “had lost touch with reality.” Eventually, writes the author, her “madness descended into burlesque.” Nonetheless, Le Tellier longed for his mother’s love; then she became ill with Alzheimer’s, and the situation deteriorated further. In some of the more moving moments, the author reflects on what life was like in France under the Nazis, how deeply he was affected by a film on the concentration camps, and how the deaths of important childhood friends and a girlfriend have impacted his life. Through the process of writing this memoir, it’s apparent Le Tellier is coming to terms with the many fraught relationships of his life and the successes and disappointments he experienced during his youth. The writing is unquestionably sincere, but the story is overly particular and may not resonate much beyond the author’s intimate circle.
A brief, adequate memoir in which the author attempts to decipher his complicated, multilayered childhood in order to understand the adult he is today.Pub Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59051-937-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
