Next book

SHOT IN THE HEART

In a narrative that holds all the morbid fascination of a bad car wreck, the kid brother of Gary Gilmore—immortalized in Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, he campaigned for his own death and became the first person to be executed in America after the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s—details a sickening family history of violence, rage, and lies that spans several generations. Mother Bessie, who was traumatized by her unforgiving Mormon parents (her father who was beaten with his own father's wooden leg, in turn would batter Bessie's brother until the gawky boy passed out), married Frank Gilmore, a Catholic 20-some years her senior. Frank neglected to mention that he had six ex-wives and several abandoned children. The son of a mother who withheld her love, Frank became a drunk and a thief who left home for months at a time and moved his family frequently to evade the law. To get back at him, Bessie had an affair and became pregnant by one of his sons from a previous marriage. He suspected Gary was not his (in fact, the oldest, Frank, Jr., wasn't) and particularly disdained him. Frank regularly and savagely beat Bessie, and Mikal's older brothers Gary, Frank, Jr., and Gaylen, and robbed them of all shreds of security and self-esteem. Gary, a gifted artist and very intelligent teenager, was sent to reform school because of his father's recalcitrance, and there he became a criminal. His stints in jail further turned him into the monster who senselessly murdered two young Mormon men. Mikal humanizes Gary, and tells of the wrenching legacy he and his other brothers inherited: alcoholic Gaylen died of knife wounds, probably inflicted by a jealous husband; Frank, Jr., cared for the mother who hated him until her death, and then became a recluse; and the youngest, Mikal, now a senior editor at Rolling Stone, lives with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother. Articulate, brave, and heartbreaking. (15 b&w photos, not seen) (First serial to Rolling Stone; film rights to Alan Pakula; Book-of-the-Month Club featured selection; Quality Paperback Book Club selection; author tour)

Pub Date: June 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-385-42293-8

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1994

Next book

NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

Next book

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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

Close Quickview