The emotional autobiography of a woman whose religious odyssey begins in Orthodox Judaism and ends in Roman Catholicism. What sets this apart from other conversion accounts is that Bruder (Going to Jerusalem, 1979) never rejects her heritage. She believes that ``God is present equally in Torah scroll and consecrated wafer.'' Nor does she argue that God wants all Jews to convert; her story applies to herself alone. It begins in Brooklyn, with a childhood dominated by a glum mother, a remote father, and by the strictness—especially toward women—of Orthodox Judaism. Joy comes with the great Shabbat celebrations, but God remains a distant, unknown figure. In time, Bruder grows up, marries, adopts a child, works for a doctorate. Then one day, stopped in her car at a red light, God speaks to her: ``I will be with you always,'' He says. From now on, Bruder becomes a religious seeker. She pores over the Bible, talks to rabbis, discovers Buddhism. Then life unravels: A novel goes nowhere, her academic career collapses. At wits' end, Bruder—in almost classic 12-step fashion—admits her inadequacy and surrenders to her fate (``This was the thing itself, bitter cup to the dregs''). A loving presence appears, a matron dressed in black, possibly the Virgin Mary (Bruder remains uncertain). The author discovers prayer. Once again, God addresses her, in Hebrew this time: ``Lech lecha'' (``get up and go out''). Bruder does, to Mass, and becomes a Catholic, receiving ``God's unconditional love and forgiveness.'' The onslaught of personal crises may grate on readers' nerves. So may Bruder's writerly tics, which include verbless sentences galore and enough one-sentence paragraphs (in one stretch, 14 in a row) to put Kurt Vonnegut to shame. But her singular conversion is memorable, as is her vivid description of Jewish Orthodoxy in all its severity and majesty.
Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-46874-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992
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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