Sometimes there are pressing reasons to publish a work posthumously. But sometimes, as with this slim collection of autobiographical fragments and deeply felt pet anecdotes by a talented actress, the reasons for publication are less compelling. Although she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress early in her career (for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), as well as two Tony Awards for her work on stage (including best actress, for her role in A Thousand Clowns), Dennis's true calling was apparently as an animal lover, a role in which she displayed substantial and ceaseless talent. Piecemeal fashion, she recounts here how, over the years, she took in any number of dogs and dozens and dozens of cats, most of them strays and foundlings. Even when she was touring with a production, a few more cats would find their way to her and be added to the mÇnage. Like all true pet lovers, Dennis was endlessly tolerant as furniture, drapes, even telephones suffered the onslaught of so many capering claws. Every meal was a desperate defensive action. Water pistols worked for a time, but eventually a dog ate the pistols and Dennis was forced to give up meat: ``Even then all was not safe, as there seemed to be a growing number of vegetarian and pasta groupies among the carnivores.'' The non-pet portions of this book are almost exclusively childhood memories. Though precise and visceral, they read more like method acting memory exercises than cogent narratives. Much of this book was written while Dennis was dying of cancer, which does give the writing the strong emotional overlay of promise unfulfilled. Despite the editor's best efforts to weld these disparate fragments together, they never really cohere into anything more than a series of precious, pointillist moments. (23 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: April 27, 1997
ISBN: 1-57601-001-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
