A somewhat tone-deaf depiction of a white child’s picturesque childhood in mid-20th-century Northern Rhodesia.
In this semiautobiographical novel, Stevens (Hero of the Struggle, 2011) recounts his adventurous childhood in South Africa and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).
Beginning with his earliest memories as a twin in the womb, Stevens uses tongue-in-cheek humor to describe the relatively carefree childhood he enjoyed as the son of middle-class white parents in 1940s and 1950s South Africa. As the only son, Stevens enjoyed a precariously balanced peace with his twin sister, “Twiny,” and older sister, “Big Sis.” Stevens describes himself as the “model boy” living in a “model village.” He is the favorite of his mother and a bit of a ham. Stevens colorfully describes the many antics he played as a rascal child, including a trial drive of his father’s car, with wry humor and descriptive stage-setting. The family balance tipped with the birth of the author’s third sister, “Little Sis.” Stevens’ father, a miner, transferred the family to Northern Rhodesia after a work opportunity arose. In lush detail, Stevens describes the new terrain and wildlife. The nostalgic, vividly described memories of adventures in the Rhodesian bush with friends transport the reader to a time before video games and the Internet (“No computer game can simulate what we learned in the bush”). As Stevens grew to be a teenager, his rebellious spirit continued. He adopted a James Dean-like ducktail haircut and mixed with other like-minded teenagers. Meanwhile, a changing political climate and conflict brewed in Africa. The prose is at times politically incorrect; black Africans are simply called “the blacks,” and the historic struggles are but lightly acknowledged: “It may be true that a change from white minority rule was necessary, that it was the moral course to follow, but it’s also true that it really messed up my idyllic childhood.” Readers should beware of some politically incorrect, off-color humor.
A somewhat tone-deaf depiction of a white child’s picturesque childhood in mid-20th-century Northern Rhodesia.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463726829
Page Count: 228
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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