A striking celebration of the bond between a mother and son.
Literary agent Gilman, a former professor of English literature, describes the challenges that she faced parenting a developmentally disabled son.
The author’s expectations of motherhood were shaped by her memories of her own idyllic childhood, reinforced by the romantic poetry of Wordsworth. The reality was harsher until, to her great delight, at the age one her son Benjamin began showing what appeared to be amazing precocity. He recognized letters, could identify objects and at 16 months could read several words. Though he didn’t like being touched and was fearful of loud sounds, he delighted in showing off his skills. At two, he was able to read fluently and tap out complex rhythms, and he loved to sing and recite poetry. His memory was also impressive, as was his recognition of shapes and numbers. Gilman's anxiety for her son began to dissipate, and she and her husband “simply accepted that we had an odd, unconventional, and possibly brilliant little boy on our hands.” That illusion was shattered when he was evaluated for admission to a preschool. The school administration was concerned about his lack of social skills and his tendency to parrot words rather than use them to express himself. He seemed to lack a sense of identity and didn't appear to comprehend simple pronouns, and his motor skills were poorly developed. He was also anxious and couldn't relate to the other children. Seeking professional help, the author learned that he suffered from hyperplexia, a disorder that is sometimes linked to Asperger's. The author chronicles how she and her husband, his teachers and therapists, were able to help him gain language skills and master his anxieties so that he could not only relate to others but fully express his own creative gifts. “In parenting Benj,” writes the author, “I have gotten more in touch with a profound kind of romanticism; I have been given access to a transcendent sense of mystery and awe and wonder.”
A striking celebration of the bond between a mother and son.Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-169027-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011
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
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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