by Marcia Aldrich ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998
First-time author Aldrich has certainly penned an original work, but it’s one that tries too hard to be worldly and jarring. Aldrich sacrifices autobiography for agenda, making the reader question her credibility at times (as at the start, when she claims she watched her family interact from her —unborn position—). The key figure in the narrative is Aldrich’s mother, an admittedly weird woman whose obsession with cleanliness extended to rarely cooking meals and refusing to open any windows. The reader feels confused about whether she has obsessive-compulsive disorder or whether her cleaning craze is simply an extension of the hyperfemininity she tries to instill in her daughters. From her mother Aldrich learned to pick at her food and bury her grief for her drowned older sister, who is scarcely mentioned in the book after her death is rather dispassionately discussed. As a rebellious adolescent, Aldrich was dispatched to a second-tier private school, where her only solace came in riding her horse, Alert. (The chapter on horseback riding is the most heartfelt segment of the book.) In college, she engaged in two disastrous affairs with married professors, one of whom divorced his wife and briefly married Aldrich. In the end, though, a visit to a sage fortune-teller helped her to see that she had some power to reinvent the patterns of her life. Now remarried and with a daughter, Aldrich has taken up gardening and revels in prolonging any really dirty task outdoors. When her pristine childhood dolls were sent for her own daughter’s use, Aldrich buried them all in the garden, stuffing their painted ruby lips with black earth. Too clever by half, but not personal enough to be whole, despite its encouraging conclusion.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-393-02748-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
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More by Marcia Aldrich
BOOK REVIEW
edited by Marcia Aldrich
by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998
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
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More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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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