A beautiful examination of a family and the sometimes-fragile ligatures that bind its members.
A debut memoir offers a poignant meditation on the joys and challenges of being a stepmother.
When Lile met her future husband, she was a lobbyist for a nurses’ association and he was the state representative from the 39th district of Snohomish County in Washington. Their romance started haltingly, but once Lile finally agreed to go out with Art, it quickly blossomed into something of real substance. There were hurdles, however: Art was still married to his wife, Vicki, though the two were separated, and he had two children from that relationship. Still, Lile and Art pressed on and decided to wed, though Vicki, sometimes resentfully, made the divorce proceedings arduous. Those inconveniences portended the kinds of problems Lile would recurrently encounter, the ineluctable pitfalls attached to the “blended family.” She moved into a house Art built with his ex-wife. Because Lile was unemployed, she was immediately thrust into the daily duties of stepmotherhood, shepherding Art’s kids—now hers too—about town in her car. The author experienced a short grace period characterized by polite awkwardness, but that eventually gave way to emotional conflict and an identity crisis. It was not immediately clear what role she played on Christmas or if she should be recognized on Mother’s Day. A community unfamiliar with Lile all but shunned her; Vicki could be territorial and curt. Lile and Art eventually had a child of their own, further complicating the household dynamic. And when Art’s two kids from his first marriage reached adolescence, their natural rebelliousness further challenged Lile’s goal of domestic harmony. The author sensitively and candidly discusses emotionally wrenching topics with a lighthearted touch. She quickly discovered that being a stepmother was both a dauntingly difficult and unsung role: “There is no ceremony for stepparents. No stepmom shower. No waiting for the official papers as you would for an adoption. No party balloons.” It’s impressive how generous she is recounting her struggles—she never surrenders herself to bitter recrimination or uses her remembrance to settle old scores. And Lile is refreshingly self-critical, openhandedly anatomizing her own foibles. This is a genuine love story that thoughtfully considers all the ways real-world obstacles conspire against a simple romance.
A beautiful examination of a family and the sometimes-fragile ligatures that bind its members.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63152-089-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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