Full of finely sifted detail but uneven.
Actor and performance artist Kotin bravely reveals just how powerful sugar addiction can be.
Who doesn’t enjoy a scoop of ice cream? Or even a pint? That’s fine for most people, but for compulsive overeaters, enjoyment isn’t the point, and one pint is never enough. That’s the message running through the author’s meticulous memoir, which chronicles every sugar crystal that has crossed the self-proclaimed sugar addict’s lips. By the time she digs the frozen cake out of her mother’s freezer and begins hacking off chunks, she erases any doubt that sugar addiction is a real malady. It’s hard not to get frustrated with Kotin, who, like an alcoholic or a junkie, regularly swears off her substance of choice only to find herself knee-deep in doughnuts days later. The same sort of cycle applies to her sex life, her studies, and her career; you want to shake her out of this alternatively self-indulgent and self-destructive cycle, though you know it’s futile, like talking to a problem drinker after a night at the bar: there’s no getting through the foggy thinking that’s symptomatic of addiction. Kotin’s ups and downs are so repetitive that it can be hard to detect the personal growth at the heart of this coming-of-age memoir. Her development as an artist comes through brilliantly, though, when she describes heartbreaking performance pieces in spare prose that is all the more illuminating for not overwhelming readers with details. Kotin’s self-effacing, candid humor hits the mark at many junctures; elsewhere, she simply provides too much information about her bowel habits. However, the author is dedicated to showing the whole ugly process of coming to terms with addiction, and her honesty makes her plight palpable.
Full of finely sifted detail but uneven.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8070-6925-7
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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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