by Judi McMahon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2012
A sometimes intriguing but overwritten slice of American life.
An exhaustive fictionalized account of the author’s life and American culture in the mid-20th century.
In what she calls “a novelized memoir,” McMahon (Looking for Love in All the Wrong and Right Places, 2012, etc.) spares few details in recounting her life from her childhood in Brooklyn to the present day, via her alter ego Annie Rosenberg. From her life in her 20s among artsy friends in Greenwich Village, to a disastrous marriage (and eventual remarriage) to a Manhattan firefighter, to her struggles with alcoholism and days meditating with Indian guru Baba Muktananda at a Catskills ashram, the author delivers well-researched tales of her and her friends’ lives. Although there are compelling stories within this vast book, including her experiences as an insider in the 1950s record industry, the moments of interest often get lost amidst extraneous information. McMahon dwells at length on the backgrounds of minor characters and strings along subplots for multiple chapters before abruptly dropping them. There’s so much going on within the book’s sprawling narrative that many characters and plotlines seem underdeveloped. The book’s aim to present a complete picture of its era sometimes makes it feel like a history textbook: “The 1950s, a decade of conformity, began to change. Gene Kelly and America were singing in the rain, and Eisenhower was President.” Similarly, Annie and her compatriots’ dialogue sometimes tends more toward exposition than realistic conversation; when Annie runs into an old friend in Greenwich Village, the friend exclaims: “Hell, it’s great downtown, friendly, non-judgmental, good for finding out about life and about how to live on your own.” Overall, the novel is a pleasant read, but isn’t consistently engaging.
A sometimes intriguing but overwritten slice of American life.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477568842
Page Count: 476
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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