Chronicles the entire journey of one man and his dog, illuminating the ways animals enhance our lives.
A heartfelt memoir that chronicles one man’s relationship with his mixed-breed dog.
At the age of 10, Camen had his heart broken when his parents, without rhyme or reason, took away his puppy. Camen harbored a deep bitterness about the loss and never got close to another dog. Then a miracle comes into his life in the form of a half-Sheltie, half–American Eskimo puppy. Told in an earnest and humorous voice, Camen’s memoir traces his 13-year journey with his dog, Snoopy. From the moment Camen saw the pup at the Burbank Animal Shelter, he knew there was something special about him. Not being an animal person, Camen learned how to take care of a canine. The memoir is full of anecdotes that every dog owner and animal lover will appreciate—Snoopy’s love for the plastic children’s slide in the park, his obsession with bones and his harmless wrestling matches with Melvin the cat. More emotional stories also occur, such as when Camen took Snoopy to visit his aging parents, who never did realize the trauma they caused by taking away that first puppy. But through Snoopy, Camen was able to somewhat forgive them. Some vignettes could have been skipped, including an undramatic near run-in with a junkyard cat and the time the author, a vegetarian, ate lard-fried chips. It’s clear Camen’s memoir is really about his need to work through his grief over losing Snoopy, and it sometimes reads as a bit self-indulgent. Yet Camen’s love for the Sheltie–American Eskimo mix is so strong that it radiates off the pages. The heartbreaking portion of the memoir is the way Camen tells of Snoopy’s gradual decline. At the heart of Camen and Snoopy’s story is the remarkable bond between human and dog. For Camen, Snoopy made him a more caring, loving and compassionate person.
Chronicles the entire journey of one man and his dog, illuminating the ways animals enhance our lives.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1936672554
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Cedar Forge Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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