Smoothly written chronicle that’s part travelogue, part contemporary relationship commentary, and all heart.
An award-winning travel writer embarks on an African expedition to prove his love.
In 2007, Smith began a monumental trek walking the length of Africa, mirroring the trail that British explorer Ewart Grogan had taken more than a century ago. Grogan’s purpose was to prove his worthiness to the stepfather of his wealthy sweetheart Gertrude, who saw him only as an unemployed university dropout. Smith’s mission was to assess the current state of Africa—and to satisfy his obsession with Grogan—and also to alleviate a few last-minute, nagging reservations about his upcoming marriage to fiancée Laura. For both men, the exhaustive march from Cape Town to Cairo offered a physical token of commitment. Smith creatively dispenses Grogan’s history—parentless by age 19, he traveled the world while harboring an obsession with Africa. In reimagining the uniqueness of Grogan’s solitary journey up the Zambezi River, Smith dexterously interweaves it with his own turbulent courtship of Laura and the life-changing odyssey he hoped would quell his feelings of ambiguity about marriage. He sought to discover “some kind of equanimity in the tangle of self-doubt and hesitation I’ve woven in my head.” The author’s troubles along his journey—a “stifling” private cabin while crossing a massive lake, flirty locals, mountain gorillas—hardly compare to Grogan’s, who had limited and comparably antiquated means to battle swarming insects, frequent fevers, parasites, malaria, larceny and cannibal tribes. Employing an affable, conversational tone and including generous photographs, Smith provides an engrossing story that runs parallel to Grogan’s history. Most impressive is the author’s stark honesty. Even after completing the 4,500-mile journey, marrying the girl of his dreams less than a month later and fathering a daughter, Smith still admits to the sadness of “old freedoms fading” and realistically ponders the longevity of true love.
Smoothly written chronicle that’s part travelogue, part contemporary relationship commentary, and all heart.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-187347-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
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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