A compelling story that nevertheless will appeal almost exclusively to karate fans.
A British “karateka” offers a bone-crushing, lip-splitting, and often elegant memoir of a tough guy searching for higher meaning through the study of martial arts.
As a youth, Clarke was the kind of hard-as-nails teen who was fond of communicating with his fists. He was good at it, and despite his diminutive size, he could be counted on to win most scraps. But when the Irish émigré’s rough-and-tumble ways ultimately landed him in the aptly named Strangeways Prison in Manchester, England, he realized that breaking noses and cracking ribs had limited value beyond the strict borders of his hard-pressed neighborhood. The author describes his prison experiences in wonderful, almost lyrical prose that delivers both poignancy and punch: “During the visits, no physical contact was allowed; there was no chance to feel the warmth of another person who was dear to you, not your girlfriend, nor your mother, or even your child if you had one.” Sadly, Clarke doesn’t linger on this rich material for long before he’s deep into his karate chronicles, introducing the numerous schools, teachers, and training techniques he encountered during the late 1970s and early ’80s. He discusses various clashes in great detail, which resulted in a variety of injuries. He also addresses the sensitive politics specific to the world of karate. What’s missing in these sections, however, is the sobering, sure-handed universality that Clarke brings to the portrayal of his earlier days. He makes cursory references to the dissolution of his first marriage and the stresses that his single-minded pursuit of karate placed on his personal life, but it’s clearly evident that Clarke is much more interested in delving into dojo dynamics than anything else. This approach may shut out a large segment of non–karate enthusiasts who might otherwise have found Clarke’s life undeniably fascinating.
A compelling story that nevertheless will appeal almost exclusively to karate fans.Pub Date: May 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-159439-378-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: YMAA Publication Center
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2015
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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