An ultimately affirming, albeit overwrought, story of recovery.
Gill, a former “disciple” of alcohol and “fanatical atheist,” gives readers a guided tour through his visions of hell in this harrowing true survivor story.
An exceedingly dark ride, as befitting its subject, this densely written “confession” immerses readers in Gill’s “psychic turbulence” and descent into alcohol and drug abuse. He was born to a European mother and Pakistani father and had “a red-haired veteran of the Vietnam War for a stepfather.” A vividly rendered dream (about demons that “clung to the tower’s walls like enraged and monstrous bats”), which opens the book, is prelude to the escalating debauchery of Gill’s early life. He started drinking at 16; by 22, he stopped “trying to maintain appearances...trying to function normally...trying to participate in the human race.” He writes, “I simply gave up—on life, on myself, on everything.” He painstakingly recounts a bender fueled by cocaine and crystal meth, and a vision of Jesus Christ keeping the demons at bay does little to curb his self-destructive impulses. Gill does eventually find love and emerges on “the other side of a living death.” The author takes opportunities at various points to make amends with some that he wronged, including a woman to whom he drunkenly exposed himself. “Whoever you are,” he writes, “I am deeply sorry. I was a very lost, very disturbed kid.” Considering the extent of his substance abuse, one can’t help but wonder how he could recount his life in such detail, an issue he addresses directly: “the inevitability of subjective distortion forces me to admit that this narrative is bound to contain errors.” Some may balk at the marathon paragraphs, florid passages, italic typeface, and copious Bible citations. Devout readers, however, may be more willing to forgive a saved Gill’s trespasses both in life and on the page.
An ultimately affirming, albeit overwrought, story of recovery.Pub Date: May 13, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 299
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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