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DO-OVER!

Name: DO-OVER!
Author: Robin Hemley
ISBN: 978-0-316-02060-2

IN WHICH A FORTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD FATHER OF THREE RETURNS TO KINDERGARTEN, SUMMER CAMP, THE PROM, AND OTHER EMBARRASSMENTS

by Robin Hemley ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 20, 2009

Far from generating epiphanies, these “renovations” merely reinforce how nice it is to be an adult.

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A 48-year-old writer chronicles his goofball quest to correct the perceived failures of his youth.

Hemley (Nonfiction Writing/Univ. of Iowa; Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday, 2003, etc.) undertakes a dubious immersion-journalism project in the form of “do-overs.” These attempts to repair the major emotional traumas of his childhood and adolescence involve revisiting the sites of his worst failures, from kindergarten to high school, summer camp to standardized testing. He couldn’t even scrounge up a prom date. But you’d think his privileged adult existence—published author, father of three, university professor—might snuff out memories of botched grade-school plays and junior-high bullies. Hemley, however, insists that he’s still bothered by these trivialities. Too bad, then, that the book’s conceptual gimmickry yields little more than the occasional entertaining anecdote, the obvious fish-out-of-water comedy inherent in someone pushing 50 trying to pass for a five-year-old, and a fitfully amusing travelogue, as the author lumbers from Sewanee, Tenn., to Osaka, Japan, trying to enlist unfortunate souls from his past in his geeky time-travel fantasies. Of course, Hemley’s had real traumas that hang like a mist over this revisionist endeavor: an ugly divorce, his late sister Nola’s schizophrenia and his father’s death at 51. A few relevant observations cut through the “gee, they sure did things differently in my day!” remarks, as when Hemley contrasts contemporary kids’ structured, monitored and medicated lives with the dog-eat-dog anarchism that characterized his own youthful social experiences. But the do-over with the most potential for dramatic tension—going to the senior prom with his high-school crush—falls flat.

Far from generating epiphanies, these “renovations” merely reinforce how nice it is to be an adult.

Pub Date: May 20, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-316-02060-2

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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OBLIVION
by Robin Hemley

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BORDERLINE CITIZEN
by Robin Hemley

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INVENTED EDEN
by Robin Hemley

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)