A raw, uncut journey into the wilds of Venezuela.
Travel writer Maslin (Iranian Rappers and Persian Porn: A Hitchhiker's Adventures in the New Iran, 2009) offers a firsthand account of the many debacles endured throughout his Venezuelan trek. Yet what makes his story unique is the manner in which he chooses to experience the country—by couch surfing, a get-what-you-pay-for approach to traveling in which hosts open their homes to strangers. The result is a comic tale in which Maslin soon finds himself accosted by corrupt cops and abandoned by unruly cab drivers, as well as serving as pincushion to an overzealous nurse and her needle. While the author blends his problematic personal narrative alongside Venezuela's historical backdrop, and current turbulent politics under the leadership of loose cannon Hugo Chávez the personal tale wins out. His experiences on the ground depict a poverty-stricken nation with a predatory populace looking to exploit naïve travelers. However, Maslin provides another view as well, in which the beauty-obsessed citizens somehow find the funds to frequent plastic surgeons with the regularity most people reserve for dentists. Venezuela's body-complex epidemic comes into even sharper focus as the author draws connections between plastic surgery and the country's love for beauty pageants—a cultural undercurrent that transforms young girls to grown women with the flick of a scalpel. Maslin soon moves beyond the Venezuelan people's proclivities, devoting equal time to the country's natural beauty, including a journey into the dense jungles to glimpse Angel Falls, the world’s tallest waterfall. This juxtaposition between people and place—as well as beauties both natural and otherwise—offers a rare commentary on a country most readers know little about. A complex portrait of Venezuela's people, poverty and promise.
Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61608-221-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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