A thoughtful and inspiring but idiosyncratic reflection on a shiftless youth that may not command a broad readership.
A writer remembers a troubled youth haunted by a violent father and the premature death of his mother.
Cera (A Collection of Outdoor Tales, 2012, etc.) was “not a very well-liked child”; in fact, he didn’t particularly like himself. He was an impetuous boy inclined to court disaster or at least to follow his friends in its direction. As the title of his memoir suggests, he tended to learn only from the consequences of his rashness. His toughest years, he recalls, spanned from elementary school through high school—after his mother, Mary, left his father, Dante, the author was left to contend with his “volatile temper” and his “dark, disturbing side.” Cera eventually moved in with his mother, but found the living arrangement emotionally unmanageable after she became afflicted with cancer, a disease that ultimately took her life. With admirable candor, the author movingly reflects on the shame he felt over his abandonment: “I hated myself as I felt the searing metal hand grab my heart and twist it, but I knew I could not stay with her.” He moved back in with his father and faced the hysterical contempt of his stepmother, Miriam, and the savage beatings his father made her endure. Cera’s book is structured as a series of vignettes, slices of personal history that poignantly paint a picture of youthful struggle and disappointment as well as their ramifications on his early adulthood, including a marriage that failed painfully. The author’s account is deeply confessional: Intimately openhanded, he never spares himself from criticism. And while the tone can be darkly melancholic, this book isn’t a lugubrious lament. In fact, Cera celebrates the life he eventually crafted for himself, including a happy marriage and the hard-earned wisdom that made such self-improvement possible. But this is an intensely idiosyncratic tale, and it’s not obvious that it will appeal widely beyond the sphere of the author’s loved ones. And while the remembrance can be emotionally powerful, it’s written in plain, poetically unadorned prose.
A thoughtful and inspiring but idiosyncratic reflection on a shiftless youth that may not command a broad readership.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9848250-3-5
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Libra Books Inc.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A crash course in big-bucks tort litigation, as rich as any novel on the scene. In the mid-'70s, the small industrial town of Woburn, Mass., found itself afflicted with a plague of biblical dimensions: 12 local children, 8 of them close neighbors, had died (or were dying) of leukemia. The parents suspected the water supply, which was foul-smelling, rusty, and undrinkable, but they had no hard evidence of a link to the cancers. But in 1979, the accidental discovery of carcinogenic industrial wastes in the town's wells led the grieving parents to hire personal-injury lawyer Jan Schlichtmann, new to the profession but intoxicated with the sizable damages he'd won so far. This is magazine journalist Harr's first book, but his complex portrait of Schlichtmann is the work of a master. Egomaniacal, quixotic, workaholic, greedy, altruistic, and naive, Schlichtmann is Everylawyer, and as he allows the Woburn case to consume his practice, he almost loses his license and his life. Harr wisely downplays the dying-children angle, focusing instead on Schlichtmann's case against the two corporate Goliaths who dumped the waste: Beatrice Foods (represented by Jerome Facher of Boston's Hale & Dorr) and W.R. Grace (represented by William Cheeseman of Boston's Foley, Hoag & Eliot). Despite their white- shoe lineage, Facher and Cheeseman play dirty, withholding evidence and repeatedly seeking Schlichtmann's suspension for having filed a ``frivolous'' lawsuit. But the real villain of the story is Federal District Judge Walter J. Skinner, whose personal dislike of Schlichtmann (and camaraderie with Facher) leads him to grant the defense's motion to split the trial into two protracted phases. By the time Judge Skinner submits four incomprehensible questions to be bewildered jury, Woburn's young victims have been forgottenand the whole legal system has suffered a tragic loss. A paranoid legal thriller as readable as Grisham, but important and illuminating. (Film rights to Disney)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-394-56349-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
A generous and singularly insightful examination of memoir.
A bestselling nonfiction writer offers spirited commentary about memoir, the literary form that has become synonymous with her name.
Personal narrative has exploded in popularity over the last 20 years. Yet, as Karr (Lit: A Memoir, 2009, etc.) points out, memoir still struggles to attain literary respectability. “There is a lingering snobbery in the literary world,” she writes, “that wants to disqualify what is broadly called nonfiction from the category of ‘literature.’ ” In this book, Karr offers both an apology for and a sharp-eyed exploration of this form born from her years as a practitioner as well as a distinguished English professor at Syracuse University. She begins by considering classroom “experiments” she has conducted to show the slipperiness of memory and arguing the need to give latitude to writers tackling memoir. Writing with the intent to record what rings true rather than exact is one thing; writing with the intent to lie is another. Voice is another critical aspect of any memoir that manages to endure through time. By examining works by writers as diverse as Frank McCourt and Vladimir Nabokov, Karr demonstrates that it is in fact the very thing by which a great memoir “lives or dies.” Rather than focus on the narrative truism of “show-don’t-tell,” Karr thoughtfully elaborates on what she calls “carnality”—the ability to transform memory into a multisensory experience—for the reader. When wed to a desire to move beyond the traps of ego and render personal “psychic struggle” honestly and without fear, carnality can lead to writing that not only “wring[s] some truth from the godawful mess of a single life,” but also connects deeply with readers. Karr’s sassy Texas wit and her down-to-earth observations about both the memoir form and how to approach it combine to make for lively and inspiring reading.
A generous and singularly insightful examination of memoir.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-222306-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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