Extraordinary people with extraordinary experiences—all expressed in leaden prose that drags to earth a story that should...
In language most hackneyed, a mother relates her daughter’s struggle to survive pediatric HIV/AIDS and her emergence as a spokesperson for AIDS awareness.
Is there a cliché in the English language that does not appear here? People go “the extra mile,” “stay on top of everything” (or find things “spinning out of control”); they have “two strikes against them” as they find the way “out of the woods,” only to learn that something is “a double-edged sword” and that there are “no simple answers or quick fixes.” And then this whopper: “Being cooped up together 24/7 for weeks on end was no picnic.” The slothful prose, fashioned by Romanowski (who has ghosted books with Annette Funicello and psychic George Anderson, 1994 and 1991, respectively), diminishes immeasurably the effect of a most inspiring story. In 1984, Patricia Broadbent and her husband adopted Hydeia as an infant and learned in her fourth year that her many medical problems and lack of appetite were due to one thing: the HIV virus she had inherited from her birth mother, a drug addict who had surrendered Hydeia shortly after delivery. This alarming intelligence animated rather than depressed the Broadbents. They made themselves experts on the infection, battled ignorance and fear wherever they found it (from nursery schools to physicians’ offices), and became fierce advocates for their daughter—and for others suffering from the infection, especially children. The National Institutes of Health accepted Hydeia in one of their experimental treatment programs, and the Broadbents began their long, stressful, expensive, but ultimately rewarding journey. Hydeia herself became an articulate AIDS activist, met an assortment of celebrities who contributed energy and/or money to her cause and appeared on countless talk shows—and even on the podium at the GOP National Convention (1996). She contributes a few pages here, as well.
Extraordinary people with extraordinary experiences—all expressed in leaden prose that drags to earth a story that should soar.Pub Date: March 19, 2002
ISBN: 0-679-46314-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
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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