Narcissus in Nikes.
Running Times senior writer Toor (Writing/Eastern Washington Univ.; The Pig and I: Why It’s So Easy to Love an Animal, and So Hard to Love a Man, 2005, etc.) charts her transformation from exercise-resistant “pretentious little intellectual” in college to 40-something ultramarathoner.
Fifteen years after forswearing her Oreo-eating ways, Toor has run more than “forty marathons and ultras” and won “a handful of small boutiquey races in mountainous, out-of-the-way places” like the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and the Himalayas. She has also become one of a dozen or so athletes selected by Clif Bar as pacers, who volunteer in helping less-experienced runners achieve their PRs (personal records, or personal best times at a given distance) in marathons throughout the country. Toor’s somewhat fractured collection of short essays on all things running offers many helpful maxims for long-distance runners, ranging from what to expect after a marathon (“You finish the race and walk around feeling fat. Bloated. Porked out. Your whole everything is swollen like a bruise”) to a detailed description of Ride and Tie events, lengthy races involving teams comprised of a pair of runners and a horse. No matter what the subject, though, the spotlight always returns to, and shines brightest on, the author and her accomplishments. She doesn’t hesitate to relate why she prefers running with men (“you can talk about nothing for hours”) or offer reasons why she’s had trouble in relationships (“I don’t cook, and I’m kind of mean”), admitting she’s guilty of that “least appealing” runnerly trait: “blinkered self-absorption.” She writes: “Sometimes, when I’m racing, the thing that keeps my mind off the discomfort I am feeling is the story I will tell about it when I’m finished.” For Toor, the acts of running and writing are seemingly intertwined, so readers will gather that the present volume brought much therapeutic relief.
Narcissus in Nikes.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8032-6033-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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