A strange, split memoir.
This seemingly ordinary memoir takes a messianic turn.
The most striking thing about the first half of Chally’s debut is how not striking it is. In a series of readable, straightforward chapters, he tells the story of his first 34 years, from birth in Illinois to youth in Iowa. The narrative expands in 1988, when settling a petty larceny offense prompted him to take the option of entering the military; he was then stationed in Germany in support of Operation Desert Shield, then Operation Desert Storm. Chally met a young woman named Patricia and married her in Iowa in 1991, and they began to raise a family. He writes about the pain of losing his grandfather and the turtles and snakes he saw in the Mojave Desert; in a friendly but unremarkable way, he recounts such everyday things as working construction, going to rock concerts, getting a tattoo, being a young father, playing video games, and so on. Trouble gathers at the peripheries of his story: casual mentions of a sleepless week high on crystal meth, for instance, or mounting problems with the IRS over a large debt. Gradually, Chally approached rock bottom and was charged with public intoxication, at which point he reached out for support: “I then picked up the Bible and was asking God for help.” So far, it’s a narrative as old as Saint Augustine. But as Chally commenced studying the Bible, his life took a new, bizarre direction. He began seeing visions and delved deeply into the various numerological arcana of biblical writing. Not much later, he came to think of himself as an anointed messiah, a Chosen One bearing witness to mankind. His family members intervened and took him to the hospital, where, at the age of 35, he underwent a battery of psychological exams, the outcomes of which he faithfully reproduces here. The result is a curious dual narrative: on one side, the author steadfastly proclaiming himself to be mankind’s savior, a direct channel of God’s will; on the other side, a straightforward presentation of all the personal, psychological, and pharmacological reasons the world might disbelieve every word herein.
A strange, split memoir.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4990-3148-5
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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