McKeon’s delightful memories have been tucked away for 50 years, and thankfully, she has brought them out to share the...
In her first book, McKeon recounts her years of working for Jacqueline Kennedy.
In 1963, the author and her sister were brought from Ireland to New York City to find work as domestic servants. After a fairly miserable year with a difficult mistress, she learned about a position just available, working for “Madam.” It was the luckiest break of her life. Upon arriving at the impressive Fifth Avenue apartment house, she was shown into a parlor. While waiting, a young boy, John, and his dog came in and showed her tricks, establishing a friendship that would last for years. Her easy interaction with John was enough to secure a position as a personal assistant. She cleaned, mended, and ironed Madam’s clothes and, more importantly, filled in for the governess, Maud. McKeon’s story is one of so many young Irish girls in service, but her employer’s easy manner and kindness to her staff give the idea that there was little hardship. This certainly isn’t a tell-all exposing personal secrets of the Kennedy family. Her travels with the family to Cape Cod, New Jersey, and elsewhere induced great loyalty, and Madam returned her employees’ loyalty. Her kindness at family loss and generosity when the author married are the stuff of fairy tales. She was also very possessive, and many weekends and days off were cancelled because Madam needed her. When the author fell in love with a man in the building trades, he was invited to the Cape for the summer, helping on weekends as a handyman and joining in the touch football games. Even after she married, McKeon still worked for Mrs. Kennedy, just not as a live-in assistant. In a wonderfully readable narrative, she shares good and bad times with the family and their children, always faithfully protecting their privacy.
McKeon’s delightful memories have been tucked away for 50 years, and thankfully, she has brought them out to share the enchanting magic of Camelot with us all.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5894-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
