Prolific West (A Stroke of Genius, 1995; The Tent of Orange Mist, 1995) strikes again, this time with an affectionate but characteristically showy paean to his mother. West calls her ``an orchid who doubled as a gardener,'' aptly describing a woman of fragile health but redoubtable will and demonstrating his own reverent amazement at her strength. The only daughter of an English butcher, Mildred Noden West ran her father's shop while three brothers went to war, then sacrificed a promising career as a concert pianist when one died. She endured extensive surgery in order to bear children and, having paid dearly for fertility, seemed determined to make the most of child-rearing. Mildred instilled in the young Paul a love of music and literature, and West credits her ``fierce, harrying love'' and goading ambition for his development as a man of letters. He pays tribute with his trademark high-octane prose and with dense (and distracting) allusion-studded riffs that detail his intellectual coming-of-age under Mildred's direction. Possessed of a restless intellect more impressive than entertaining, West mars his storytelling with a constant need to dazzle, and he indulges in wordplay and digression at the expense of clarity. He often abandons his mother's story to tell his own (as when he relates the rigorous preparation for exams at Oxford) but insists that she is always in his thoughts, if not his narrative. The most affecting moments are when the two are alone in the dark at the cinema during the Blitz; listening to cricket matches on a portable radio in the backyard; and in later years, enacting a touching, ten-minute ritual of waving goodbye. West's affection for his mother grows with age, and he watches with some bemusement when she embraces television and, in her nineties, moves to a new home and befriends a motley crew of eccentrics. A taxing, distracted read whose tender mercies are too few and far between.
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-86757-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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