A pedantic, tedious hardcover debut in which Grimes (the paperback Almost Perfect) presents an imaginary journal kept by Martha Jefferson, beloved wife of Thomas, during the passionate but tragically few years of their marriage. Thomas and Patty (as Martha was known to her family) have eyes only for each other from their first meeting in October 1770, but although a 21-year-old widow with a young son, Patty is determined never to marry again, so shattered was she by her husband's preference for his slave mistress over her. The courtship proceeds in spite of her resolve, however, and eventually Thomas's love and respect for her overcome her objections. Married New Year's Day, 1772, they move to cramped temporary lodgings while Monticello is being painstakingly built, and begin to raise a family. The issue of slave emancipation becomes a frequent theme through the years as naive Patty learns the bitter realities of the black experience from her temperamental but trusted handmaid, Betty, who was her late father's concubine and bore him many children (though she despised him for keeping her from her husband). Meanwhile, the political situation in Virginia and the Colonies takes Thomas away from Patty for long periods, and the pain of each parting is recorded faithfully, along with many details of the war for American independence. Not surprisingly, the births, stillbirths, and deaths of their children figure prominently also, as do countless instances of Patty's liver-fevers and other ailments, which kept her husband increasingly by her side until she died in 1782—an event that left him bereft of his senses for a time, but that finally allowed him to return to the political sphere he loved with a similar intensity. Historically accurate and sincere—but also a redundant, overly precious patchwork of a courageous woman's private thoughts and the colorful American life swirling around her.
Pub Date: Jan. 20, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-42399-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
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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