by Sharley Jackson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 10, 2014
An intimate, funny, painfully perceptive self-portrait that’s bloody good, mate.
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In this lively, candid memoir, an avid traveler and 30-something Aussie at first wants to find a man to love, later a woman instead, but ultimately wants to discover herself.
In her debut book, blogger Jackson appears to love drama, which is good, because her life is rich in it. She is most entertaining as she describes her many escapades, desires and disappointments. As a young girl, she wanted a love that was “silk and sky and sophisticated kindness,” but the Australian singer/social worker wasn’t finding it in her homeland. So the self-described “cheeky little red headed chubster” set her “love compass” toward the Americas for what she hoped would be a five-month passionate sabbatical. She flew from Brisbane to LA before arriving “smack bang in the middle of Brooklyn,” where she lived for two weeks on a Home Stay program as she explored “a haughtily glamorous Manhattan.” When she later joined a travel group that went to various must-see destinations, Jackson had a series of unrequited crushes on her tour guides—first the male ones, then on “girl-next door” Hannah. Jackson, who previously had relations with guys, struggled with her feelings for Hannah and with the idea of “coming out.” Hannah, however, was straight, so nothing ensued. Once home in Australia, Jackson quickly felt the need to travel again, this time to Asia. On that trip, she became besotted with a German traveler named Astrid. A friend told Jackson that her personal slogan should be “NEED BIG LOVE, NEED IT NOW!” and she desperately wanted that love with Astrid, who failed to reciprocate because, like Hannah, she too was straight. Jackson continued traveling to faraway places and having unsuccessful love relationships. Like her life, the memoir gets repetitive: travel, yearn for the wrong person, repeat. Eventually, her “thoughts zeroed in on one thing—a baby.” But multiple rounds of in vitro fertilization failed. She then found some pleasure through painting and mindfulness meditation. Ultimately, she says the “love that I was always seeking had to be found in me first. It was never out there.”
An intimate, funny, painfully perceptive self-portrait that’s bloody good, mate.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1502731531
Page Count: 216
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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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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