A poignant memoir that bears comparison to the bestselling Running With Scissors—but better written and far darker.
Grim, well-told memoir of a boyhood among the much-maligned Romany Gypsy “travelers” of Britain.
The pseudonymous Walsh begins by debunking some well-known myths that have contributed to a pervasive historical bias against Gypsies: “contrary to popular belief, they don’t believe in magic, and the Gypsy ‘curse’ is no more than an age-old way of scaring non-Gypsies into buying something.” Unfortunately, the biographical reality he reveals is more disturbing than the old prejudices. Walsh explains that in the decades following World War II, many Gypsy families prospered and bought land and businesses such as scrapyards, while still maintaining elaborate vehicular “caravans.” He also asserts that within this closed society remain a number of unsavory traditions, like the persistence of elaborate cons to rip off non-Gypsies. The author portrays the men as devious, crude and angry, exemplified by another tradition that caused Walsh much misery: bare-knuckle fighting. This tradition was especially important for Walsh because his father was a third-generation champion; their relationship turned monstrously abusive when Walsh’s father realized his first-born did not display the necessary aggression. Years of torment and beatings followed, along with grisly sexual abuse at the hands of an uncle. By adolescence, Walsh’s realization that he was actually gay made matters worse. He ultimately realized he must escape the confinement of his culture, which inherently necessitated fleeing his family. Despite this framework of personal misery, Walsh writes thoughtfully about his connection to this heritage, focusing on his tangled but less-vicious relationships with his mother, sister, younger brothers and extended family. Walsh tries to end on an uplifting note, but this portrait of violence and ignorance cloaked in cultural tradition may prove hard for readers to shake off.
A poignant memoir that bears comparison to the bestselling Running With Scissors—but better written and far darker.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-62208-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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