No mystery and no surprises here, but touching affirmation of the anchoring value of family and home.
A gentle autobiography in which the author's search for self often takes the form of a spiritual quest for goodness.
Fans of Merullo’s novel, Revere Beach Boulevard (1998), should be aware that this is not a continuation of that Italian underworld saga. Instead, it’s a memoir featuring a realistic and affectionate portrait of Revere Beach, a working-class town located five miles outside of Boston with a reputation for toughness and family loyalty similar to that of Brooklyn. The town figures prominently in the chapters of heartfelt, sentimental musings about Merullo’s second-generation Italian-American father, whose life was dictated by pride and discipline and whose gruff exterior masked the grief still felt for a first wife who died in childbirth. And Revere Beach remains an influence throughout the author's life, whether he’s undergoing humbling experiences at the elite Exeter Academy, driving a cab in Boston, studying in the former Soviet Union, serving as an idealistic Peace Corps volunteer in Micronesia, or vacationing with his family in Italy. At times, Merullo's ruminations seem a little too self-absorbed, but he comes across as a likable person whose struggles and identity crises are more accessible to the reader than those of most celebrities or historical figures. He goes full circle by visiting his grandmother's girlhood village in Italy, but his desire to travel, perhaps to escape for a little while, remains. “You follow the line of your particular fate,” he ultimately concludes, “a fate built partly on your soul's unique essence, and partly of your class and place and time.” Through precise dialogue and musical narration, Merullo creates a vivid word picture of sights, sounds, and emotions.
No mystery and no surprises here, but touching affirmation of the anchoring value of family and home.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2002
ISBN: 0-8070-7244-3
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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