Chick-lit-alicious.
In this fun but also moving debut memoir, Gasbarre tells the story of how she “boomeranged” back home to help care for the newly widowed grandmother who unexpectedly became her “ideal relationship guru.”
The two women seemed polar opposites. “Grandma Glo” had married young and never finished college, while Gasbarre had graduated with a master’s degree, lived in Europe, and “spent all of [her] twenties questing and introspecting to understand where [she] fit in the world.” But for all the adventure she had experienced, the author, unlike her grandmother, had only known unfulfilling, short-lived romances with men. Yet the two women found common ground in one important way—they both shared an “equally intense affinity for the first generation all-American alpha male.” Their bond deepened as Gasbarre shared the details of the two relationships that occupied her attention during her stay at her parents’ house: one with an immature collegiate six years her junior and the other with a shy, gentle cosmetic surgeon who showed her what it was like to be courted. Grandma Glo in turn provided glimpses into a bygone era when men cherished their women and women stood steadfastly by their men. Gasbarre uses each “lesson” she learned from her Grandmother—such as learning to listen, being prepared to forgive and loving by existing—as the title of each chapter, and each chapter as a kind of chronological “illustration” of how she came to terms with that lesson. Her depiction of how two “fiery, independent women” bonded across generations is heartwarming without being saccharine. The author’s treatment of the central conflict that drives the book—the quintessentially modern female quandary of finding lasting love while staying true to personal ambitions—comes across with an integrity and veracity women readers will undoubtedly appreciate.
Chick-lit-alicious.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-199739-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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