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
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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