Stoked by the author’s boundless, good-natured charm, his story pops with an effervescent sense of humor that never falters.
Think you’ve got it rough? Hemophiliac Decker contracted hepatitis B at four, was given an HIV-positive diagnosis at 11—and he can still crack a smile.
One in every 10,000 males is born with hemophilia, a deficiency in the blood-clotting protein that often, as in the author’s case, turns routine events like nosebleeds into life-threatening occasions. Aside from fun times shoplifting Penthouse with friends and covertly watching porno movies, Decker’s childhood in Waynesboro, Va., was spent battling internal hemorrhaging and liver failure while being overprotected by panicky parents desperate to shelter him from unintentional, self-inflicted injury. Even older brother Kip sympathetically imagined his demise (only because he imagined Shawn would probably “have more fun in Heaven”). But the writer, a self-proclaimed “thinblood,” adjusted quickly to his condition; by the time he was ten, the anxiety, medical treatments, ER visits and transfusions had all become routine. As a result, his heartfelt memoir is narrated with a comedic, tranquil flow not found in many accounts of tragic health conditions. Decker maintains his cool even when describing how his HIV diagnosis further complicated matters. Contracted from one of the countless blood transfusions he’d undergone, HIV provoked all the “ignorance and stigma that goes along with AIDS” in his little hometown. After his own father outed him as HIV-positive, Shawn became a tortured pariah, and his parents eventually separated. Softening the blow were star-struck meetings with wrestlers and alternative rock bands, puberty and a first crush. Graduating from high school, Decker developed his own website, began networking with support groups and reconnected with friends. He “put [his] virus to work” as an AIDS activist, though being a member of the community’s heterosexual minority often proved challenging. Not even a crushing AIDS diagnosis in 1999 could stop the resilient writer from marrying girlfriend Gwenn, a beauty-pageant veteran, and enjoying a full, happy life.
Stoked by the author’s boundless, good-natured charm, his story pops with an effervescent sense of humor that never falters.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-58542-525-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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
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
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