Marley died at age 13, and the book ends with the Grogans thinking of adopting another puppy. Please, no sequels! Only the...
Maudlin, embarrassing ode to a pooch.
The author and his wife still qualified as newlyweds—they’d been married just over a year—when they decided to adopt a dog. Jenny, who had recently killed a houseplant (a “lovely large dieffenbachia with emerald-and-cream variegated leaves”), thought she needed to brush up on her maternal skills before she tried to have a baby. Hence Marley, a lovable Labrador retriever. John adores the reggae tempo of Marley’s tail-wagging and enjoys playing tug-of-war with him. Within a few weeks, the Grogans felt confident about their caretaking ability and tossed their birth control in the trash. Jenny got pregnant, but miscarried; she embraced not only John but also Marley in her grief. And on it went: Marley got kicked out of obedience class. He developed a fear of thunder, which the Grogans discussed seriously with a vet. When the Grogans went on a trip, they left a six-page memo about Marley’s care with the colleague who agreed to dog-sit. (Blessedly, the author only reproduces three-and-a-half of those pages here.) Marley appeared in a movie, The Last Home Run. Jenny got pregnant again—maybe it was because Marley sometimes lolled around in bed with the Grogans during their basal-temperature-ovulation-calendar-we-must-have-sex-right-this-second drill-sessions—and ultimately carried two pregnancies to term. But it feels as if Grogan has mistaken Marley for his first baby. He’s like those people who prattle on about every single blessed thing their kids do—except in this case, it’s a dog.
Marley died at age 13, and the book ends with the Grogans thinking of adopting another puppy. Please, no sequels! Only the most alarmingly devoted dog lovers should bother with this one.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-081708-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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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