Beach reading for those who find Candace Bushnell too literary.
Unapologetic Jewish American Princess’ sassy memoir about sex in the city.
Coming on like a potty-mouthed Carrie Bradshaw, Aschenbrand (The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own, 2005) brings all the narcissism, arrogance and elitism to be expected from a proud-to-be-spoiled upper-middle-class woman who would rather live in a rat-infested Chinatown apartment than endure the shame of living anywhere outside of Manhattan. Of course, if it hadn’t been for Tucker Max’s subliterate success with I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (2005), one could hardly fathom that high school–quality prose like this (from a noncelebrity author, anyway) could actually be taken seriously from even the most undiscerning of major publishers: Like Max, Aschenbrand’s brand of tell-all true sex confessions isn’t really as sexy as it is childishly bawdy and gross. Rather than actually take the risk of describing in sensual detail her close encounters with hapless male victims, she mostly just makes fun of them or emphasizes a decidedly nonsexy feature of herself, like the long hairs growing out of her ass. She also offers plenty of pedestrian, Dr. Ruth–style wisdom: “[I]f I had learned anything at all, it was that if someone wasn’t sure if they wanted to be with you the worst thing you can do is to try to convince them otherwise.” Aschenbrand also insists that men are intimidated by her, yet somehow, every sentient male with a penis and a discernible pulse, from Manhattan to Tel Aviv, seems comfortable enough with her to end up in her bed (all except author Philip Roth, that is, whom she ate cherries with but sadly didn’t have sex with). Mostly, however, this is just a tossed-off, random survey of her recent hookups and breakups, both in the Big Apple and abroad, with some rich-girl kvetching thrown in for good measure.
Beach reading for those who find Candace Bushnell too literary.Pub Date: June 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-202689-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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