by Nadja Spiegelman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2016
A fascinating, gracefully written glimpse into the complexities of family life, full of secrets, hidden wounds, and survival...
All is not as it seems. That’s a good rule in life—and especially in family histories, the subject of this elegant memoir.
The daughter of New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly and Maus creator Art Spiegelman grew up surrounded by smart people and bright talk, always with the knowledge that mom was a touch eccentric. Her account opens with an episode involving a lightning storm over a choppy ocean, a risk taken seriously, Mouly believed, “by timid women who washed their vegetables”—and that her relatives across the water in France might be a touch dottier still. That wasn’t the half of it. As Spiegelman recounts, it took a residence abroad in Paris and frequent exposure to her grandparents to understand just why it was that her mother might have wanted to put an ocean between them. Of her plastic-surgeon grandfather, her mother protested, “you don’t understand. He’s just used to touching women.” There’s more to it than all that, providing some of the book’s darker moments, which are alleviated by grand-mère’s antics, even if that sturdy elder demanded that she be called Josée, as if to magically ward off the suspicion that the decades had passed. “My grandmother was beautiful long after she was beautiful,” Spiegelman writes, getting it just right. “She carried herself and dressed herself in a way that left no question.” The oddness of mother runs to grandmother and on into the past, as Spiegelman explores decades of memory with knowing nods: “Mina slapped Josée often. Which is not to say she was an abused child, she added quickly.” In the end, readers may be left with a sense of gratitude that his or her family is comparatively normal, which is not to say that these folks are terrible—odd, sure, but muddling through, with a sometimes-rueful but empathetic descendant recalling episodes they might well want to forget.
A fascinating, gracefully written glimpse into the complexities of family life, full of secrets, hidden wounds, and survival tips.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-192-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Share your opinion of this book
More by Nadja Spiegelman
BOOK REVIEW
by Nadja Spiegelman ; illustrated by Sergio García Sánchez with Lola Moral
BOOK REVIEW
by Nadja Spiegelman ; illustrated by Sergio García Sánchez
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
by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
© 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.