As the family photos illustrating this memoir attest, for Smith, all was sunshine, smiles, and elegance.
Fond memories from the last surviving child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy.
Smith, the eighth of her parents’ nine children, offers a warm portrait of her happy childhood, when she reveled in the company of her brothers and sisters, guided by her inspiring, supportive parents. Born in 1928, she grew up in their Bronxville home, where the family moved from Brookline, Massachusetts, to be closer to Joseph Kennedy’s work in Manhattan, and in their beloved summer house in Hyannis Port, on Cape Cod. “Saltwater was in our blood,” she writes, “in our genes.” Smith portrays Joe as a devoted father and husband who “flooded us with affection” and enjoyed nothing more than dinner—promptly served at 7:15—surrounded by his adoring clan. Dinner conversation veered toward politics, with “a lighthearted game” that consisted of quizzes about what each child would do if confronted with one political problem or another. Both parents instilled in the children a sense of service and responsibility; Rose was a stickler for lessons, which she felt “strengthened our knowledge and resolve.” These included music, sports, art, languages, and whatever “subject and hobby that interested us, and even some that did not.” Managing nine children involved discipline and organization. Anyone who disobeyed was sent to Rose’ clothes closet for punishment. She guided the children’s mealtime and bedtime prayers, and she kept track of their “vital statistics” on index cards, which she updated each week. Smith idolized her older brothers Joe (who was her godfather) and Jack (godfather to Teddy); her closest playmate was Teddy, the last born; and she adored her elegant sisters Kick and Pat. Smith defends her parents’ decision to treat Rosemary’s “anxieties” and “agitation” with a lobotomy, which went “tragically wrong.” As with other losses and crises, the family “could do only one thing in the aftermath: move forward.” The author’s idealized view of her family counters many biographical portraits of the Kennedys.
As the family photos illustrating this memoir attest, for Smith, all was sunshine, smiles, and elegance.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-244422-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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
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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