A beautifully written and emotionally sound look back—and forward—from a woman who has broken the glass ceiling and lived to...
This memoir includes anecdotes, self-analysis, and original poetry from a Vermont politician and author as she embarks on her eighth decade.
Kunin (Living a Political Life, 1994, etc.) broke the rules in a major way more than two decades ago as Vermont’s first elected female governor. She also served as deputy secretary of education during President Bill Clinton’s administration and spent three years as the United States ambassador to Switzerland. But not even this dynamo can reverse the aging process. In her fourth book, the author looks ahead to age 84 and beyond. She reflects on the late-in-life romance with her second husband, John, whom she met in her 70s and his 80s. (After they agreed to get married, John told Kunin, “I can give you ten years,” and she mused, “That seemed like forever.”) When John was stricken with health problems and subsequently confined to a wheelchair, he and Kunin made the decision to sell their condo and move to a cottage in a retirement village. As the author cared for her ailing husband and packed up the remains of their old life, she thought about her career and relationships, not just with John, but also with her brother, Edgar, who was a thriving politician and writer before he died. Kunin intersperses ruminations and stories of daily life with John with original poetry contemplating the veins in her hands and the arrival of autumn. A veteran of working in government as well as writing books, the author chooses her words carefully, using prose that is short and to the point but no less powerful. Her poetry is just as lovely, particularly “Can There Be More to Say,” a look at a morning marital conversation. Kunin’s take on “coming of age” as an elderly woman rather than an adolescent is unique and should appeal to readers young and old. Her tales of her mother, a Jewish immigrant who brought her two children to America after her husband’s suicide, are both poignant and indicative of the success stories Kunin and Edgar would become in adulthood.
A beautifully written and emotionally sound look back—and forward—from a woman who has broken the glass ceiling and lived to write about it.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9994995-9-7
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Green Writers Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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