A memoir that effectively conjures the world of an immigrant but offers pat answers to complex problems.
Kartheiser’s (Laptopiada, 2016, etc.) memoir offers a portrait of the Georgian-American immigrant experience in its story of a single mother who comes to the United States.
The book opens in 2004 with the then-34-year-old author frantically getting into a taxi and ordering the driver to tear through the streets of Tbilisi, Georgia. She had just two hours to locate her sons and get their passport photos taken before a 1 p.m. appointment at the United States consulate to secure visas. She was barely eking out a living in her native country and desperate to find a way out. Her book offers a tableau of the day-to-day headaches and upsets that she encountered on her quest for financial security and personal fulfillment. She provides recollections of Communist rule in Georgia, tales of the old country before it, and reflections on the country’s long, complicated history that outsiders rarely hear. The author traveled back and forth between Georgia and the United States, staying and working in America for six-month periods, separated from her family back home. She worked as a babysitter and housekeeper, which made her feel as if she was losing her identity. Still, she stayed positive: “When life gives you challenges, you have no choice—you have to fight.” At times, it seems as if Kartheiser is trying to find the most painless way to conjure the idea of an immigrant’s divided soul; for instance, she refrains from stirring up too many negative emotions—fear, rage, remorse, envy, despair. She also glosses over potentially volatile scenes that a more experienced writer wouldn’t, such as a recollection of the September morning that she turned on the television to see smoke overtaking a skyscraper. This relatively quiet 9/11 scene had great dramatic potential, but the author offers a facile conclusion: “For me, [9/11] is the worst experience of my American journey. The beacon of hope...has been attacked, in an attempt to destroy that hope. But...the people of the United States only become more caring of each other, and more patriotic to their nation.”
A memoir that effectively conjures the world of an immigrant but offers pat answers to complex problems.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5484-8328-9
Page Count: 204
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 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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