by Michelle Mazal ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A heart-rending story of the triumph of spirit over circumstance.
Debut author Mazal writes of living with a violent, alcoholic father in this memoir from Down Under.
The author was born in the early 1960s in Perth, Australia, and her story focuses mainly on her childhood and teenage years. Her father, as depicted here, was never without a bottle of beer in his hand and usually had half a dozen more waiting in the wings. Her mother was just 16 when she married him in a shotgun wedding, incurring her own father’s wrath. She then endured 20 years of being physically, verbally, and emotionally assaulted, along with her daughters, before she finally threw her husband out of the house. During her childhood, food was scarce, the author says; she and the other children were perpetually bruised and malnourished, and her own little teeth began to rot. When she was 5 or 6, she says, she and her two sisters were taken to a dentist; she was given anesthesia and awoke back in her own bed to discover that all her teeth had been pulled, earning her the nickname “Stumps,” a pejorative that followed her until the age of 14. Fortunately for the children, their maternal grandparents were loving and generous, despite their feelings about their daughter’s husband, Mazal says, but although they provided occasional respite, they didn’t live close enough to affect the kids’ daily lives. The chapters of this chilling memoir, organized according to significant events through the early part of her life, are short, evocative, and to the point. The conversational text is pleasantly sprinkled with Australian terminology, adding a local flavor: “with only the screen door between you and the mozzies, the Fremantle doctor (that’s our Aussie name for the breeze as it comes in off the ocean) would make a cool spot on the linoleum.” It could have used a stronger copy edit, but the grammatical stumbles (such as “Dad was pretty good about picking Suzanne and I up”) are minor, and overshadowed by the saga itself. Overall, it’s a painful, compelling read that shows how the author, her sisters, and her mother survived unbelievable cruelty and brutality and ultimately forged new lives for themselves.
A heart-rending story of the triumph of spirit over circumstance.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.