Occasionally uneven prose more than redeemed by a warm family narrative.
In 1994, after a lifetime of scrimping and barely making do, the 36-year-old author discovered that his two bachelor uncles had accumulated five million dollars in savings—all of it coming his way.
Harry and Joe Wolk ran a bread store that their parents, Russian-Jewish immigrants, founded on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1926. Their sister, Zachter’s mother, gave up her dreams of teaching to work full-time for free at the family store; her husband pitched in after his regular hours as an unemployment insurance claims examiner. Young Mort slept in the kitchen of his parents’ rundown one-bedroom apartment; he learned to consider a career in writing a fantasy and instead became a CPA. The question of why his uncles would sit on so much wealth rather than, say, help put Zachter through college, is never answered. Uncle Joe died before the story begins, and Uncle Harry was suffering from Alzheimer’s when his nephew learned of his millions in brokerage accounts. Apparently, they had the tormented relationship with money all too common among immigrants. Nonetheless, the author winningly details the prickly love of his close-knit family and the endless hours they put into running the beloved store. Scenes of the annual gathering after Passover dinner to count the food stamps acquired throughout the year are both touching and appalling. Zachter charmingly portrays the changing Lower East Side and the shifting relationship his uncles had with their patrons. Prices varied according to what they estimated each customer could pay (some got their bread for free), and Uncle Harry had a habit of supporting members of the community who were unable to pay their bills. Yet when his own nephew was out of work, he slipped him…two dollars. Zachter never seems bitter, describing the discovery of his uncles’ secret hoard with such surpassing sweetness and affection that readers won’t dream of envying his newfound wealth.
Occasionally uneven prose more than redeemed by a warm family narrative.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8203-2934-5
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
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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