by Sarah Gorham ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2017
A palpable, loving evocation of experiences “tucked deep” into the author’s soul.
How two years at a school in the Swiss Alps changed the life of a rebellious teenager.
Growing up in Washington, D.C., in the late 1960s, essayist and Sarabande Books editor-in-chief Gorham (Study in Perfect, 2014, etc.) was bullied so mercilessly by her classmates that she thought about suicide. Hurt and angry, she vented her feelings on her four younger sisters, tormenting, teasing, and attacking them. Banished to an attic room, she howled in fury. When her frustrated parents, their patience worn thin, offered to send her to an international school in Switzerland, where she would get “an exotic secondary education,” Gorham leapt at the chance. In her graceful, nostalgic memoir, she recalls traveling alone to the village of Goldern; acclimating to a school where students were awakened by a loud gong in the early hours of the morning to begin their chores; learning German (she picked up the language in 3 months, she reports proudly); and becoming a productive member of a close-knit community. The author discovered at the Ecole d’Humanité a “unique mixture of progressive education and tightly orchestrated environment.” The school was founded by an idealistic couple, Paul Geheeb and his wife, Edith, based on “a single, essential thought: Become who you are.” When faced with any choice, students were encouraged to ask themselves, “who do I want to be?” Although focused on self-reliance, the school nurtured a strong sense of community and responsibility to others. Adults were everywhere, monitoring students’ academic progress and, equally important, their emotional and social growth. Besides portraits of teachers and fellow students, Gorham offers a frothy piece on meringues, a savory recollection of the “beefy, winey rush” of bindenfleisch, and a tense essay about an avalanche that took one student’s life and incited “grief, fear, and anger” among the community. Returning to Goldern as an adult, Gorham broke down in tears, overcome with memories.
A palpable, loving evocation of experiences “tucked deep” into the author’s soul.Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8203-5072-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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
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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...
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
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