by John Davis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 9, 2015
A snappy, sensitive autobiography.
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In this well-crafted debut memoir, Davis recounts his early life with an angry, drug-dealing father and comes to terms with the fact of his adoption.
“My earliest memory is of a gun,” the author writes. He was 5 years old in 1970s Brooklyn, and his parents’ regular fighting, he says, had escalated to the point that his father had put a gun to his mother’s head. This serves as a shocking, visceral opening to a tightly constructed memoir in which Davis contrasts his two father figures. He devotes Part I to the man that he grew up thinking was his father, a hot-tempered illegal immigrant from Argentina who worked as a butcher, cutting corners and playing cruel jokes on customers and employees. The author writes of times when he says his father locked him in a meat freezer or shut his fingers in a car window. Davis has a knack for re-created dialogue—especially his parents’ shouts, all in capital letters—and for alternately blunt and jarring chapter-opening lines. Aptly imitating a childhood perspective, Davis at one point remembers imagining “small devil horns” near his father’s hairline. Yet after his father served 11 years in Sing Sing for selling drugs, Davis—then an adult—wrote a letter pleading leniency to stop his deportation. Instead of depicting his parent as a total monster, the author acknowledges psychological nuances by pinpointing moments that show the man’s tender core, such as when he asked his sons repeatedly if they loved him or allowed John to teach him English pronunciation. In Part II, Davis tells how he learned, at age 34, that he was adopted. He then discovered that his biological father, a Milwaukee pizzeria owner and amateur musician who left when John was 18 months old, had recently died of cancer. If Davis’ adopted father is the book’s presiding demon, his biological one is the angel: he “has become a deity to me; an almost mythical figure,” Davis observes. By including only information about his fathers, the author keeps this memoir brief and focused. As a result, there’s remarkable thematic unity here rather than a misguided drive for comprehensiveness that one often finds in memoirs.
A snappy, sensitive autobiography.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4787-6419-9
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Outskirts Press Inc.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by John Davis
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis
by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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