Bullitt-Jonas tells the story of her food addiction and rescue. A Harvard-trained Episcopal priest now living in Brookline, Mass., the author says her eating disorder raged secretly out of control until she finally could face her pain and find a way out of it. “Overeating is a language with its own grammar and vocabulary,” she notes. “It’s as much a mistake to assume that compulsive eaters love food or love to eat as it is to assume that sexually promiscuous persons love the partners that they seduce and discard.” For her, “a binge often began with an angry mind, but by the end of the binge, the anger would be comfortably cloaked and soothed.” She—d gain as much as eleven pounds in four days. But the quiet pace of her self-discovery here slowly gathers force as the author probes not only her own tale, but also her family’s. She addresses both the nature of desire and the power that comes of finally putting desire into words and accepting it. What were the hindrances? Bullitt-Jonas was born into a world where thoughts were expected to leap “from the brain to the belly,” meanwhile “avoiding the heart.” Her family’s demands for excellence, poise, and self-control, coupled with their Cambridge-style academic leanings, all exerted a baleful force on her. Hidden behind their demands, her parents—at length divorced’seemed unduly detached from her. That her Harvard professor of English father (—the master of words—) was a tormented alcoholic and her Radcliffe trustee mother (—the master of silence—) was severely depressed throughout the daughter’s childhood were facts she learned only later. Recovering her own identity is the memoir’s goal, and Bullitt-Jonas gradually also gains insight into her family and other relationships. She clears a space that she can live in. An encouraging testimonial to the rewards of following a wise suggestion: “Heal thyself.”
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-40094-X
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1998
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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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