A perceptive, descriptive portrait of Australia in the 1960s and of the immigrant experience in general.
In this memoir of vertrek, the Dutch word for leaving, first-time author Paulusse recounts his family’s immigration to Australia from the Netherlands in the early 1960s.
Paulusse was baffled by his parents’ decision to move to Australia. After a five-week ocean voyage, the family landed in Melbourne to start a new life but faced difficulties. Struggling to find employment, Paulusse’s father, Piet, worked at disappointing jobs and launched a boat-building business that failed, forcing Paulusse to augment the family income. He emptied the neighbors’ garbage (and sold the porn magazines he found), worked at a butter factory at 13 after lying about his age, and performed menial jobs to help the family manage. Paulusse paints cameos of the people he and his family met, comparing his new Australian acquaintances with his Dutch family and friends, whom the Australians jocularly called “clog wogs.” Australians seemed willing to give anyone, including immigrants, a “fair go” and “mateship,” while the Dutch come across as earnest, hardworking, and frugal but not without humor. Discovering hair in his food at the Australian assimilation camp where the family first stayed, for instance, Paulusse’s father joked that the dandruff might add flavor to the meal. This resilience, along with determination and persistence, allowed the family to survive if not always thrive. Paulusse repeats himself occasionally and makes some spelling mistakes, e.g. “Manderin” and “plagerized.” Sometimes he doesn’t explain enough—for instance, about his own curious birth with two stomachs or what might have caused his young sister’s unexpected death. But the book’s strengths outweigh its weaknesses. It’s loaded with perceptive portraits of the Australians and Dutch Paulusse knew and descriptions of his family’s struggles. The book also provides an ambivalent take on assimilation and the so-called advances of modern life compared with “a quieter, more stable time.” Overall, these memorable anecdotes are told with empathy and laced with wit and warmth.
A perceptive, descriptive portrait of Australia in the 1960s and of the immigrant experience in general.Pub Date: March 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1499031751
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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