An affecting tale of triumph over brutal debasement.
A debut memoir chronicles a man’s struggle with his sexual identity and the ghastly abuse he suffered as a child.
Nemeth was born in a small town in Ohio in 1969, and starting at an early age, he suffered withering mistreatment. His book portrays his mother as an irresponsible alcoholic largely indifferent to his happiness, and his stepfather, Jed, as terrifyingly mercurial, by turns cruelly violent or sulkily detached. According to the author, Nemeth’s biological father also took pleasure in the infliction of fear, and tortured the boy for the sake of his own cruel delight. And, Nemeth charges, Jed’s brother, Owen, sexually abused both the author and his half sister, Hailey, transgressions appallingly tolerated by the children’s custodians. In addition, the author wrestled with his attraction to boys, feelings that caused him a profound sense of shame and which he could confide to no one. Nemeth found some solace in his spirituality—he started attending church on his own at the age of 7, and his faith in Jesus was lovingly nurtured by his grandmother. He combined that source of strength with a passion for music—he attended a high school in Ohio with an excellent music and theater program, and studied vocal performance in college. He was eventually ordained a minister and toured the world as the director of a musically charged ministry. But Nemeth’s childhood trauma haunted him, as did his unresolved sexuality—he remained so conflicted he married a woman to whom he had no physical attraction. He struggled with drugs and alcohol, and contracted HIV from someone he believes knowingly infected him. The author’s remembrance is disarmingly forthright, a courageous confessional that is moving for its honesty alone. His prose is effortlessly limpid, though the story isn’t always told in in an unambiguously linear fashion, and the sequences of events can be a touch confusing. The dramatic culmination of the recollection is Nemeth’s forgiveness of his tormentors, a profound lesson in the transcendence of past pain (“Forgiveness is the healing ointment to the aching wounds of disappointment; the key that unlocks the prison door of anger. Forgiveness is the medicine that cleanses the soul from the poisonous toxicity of bitterness and resentment”). Furthermore, he furnishes an important meditation on the reconciliation of homosexuality and Christian life.
An affecting tale of triumph over brutal debasement.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5487-9870-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
