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HIS OLDEST FRIEND

Name: HIS OLDEST FRIEND
Author: Sonny Girard
ISBN: 0-8050-7580-1

THE STORY OF AN UNLIKELY BOND

by Sonny Girard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 2005

At times trite and a tad portentous, the writing nonetheless reveals two sincere souls.

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A Latino teenager and an old woman wrestle with angels and demons during a four-year friendship at the nursing home where she lives and he works.

There is poignancy and pain in this account by Kleinfield, a prize-winning reporter for the New York Times who observed firsthand a friendship he calls unlikely. The woman, nonagenarian Margaret Oliver, was a dressmaker and opera fan before she arrived at the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged. The young man, Elvis Checo, was a hip-hop fan from the Dominican Republic who’d found a job helping out at the home: pushing wheelchairs, talking with residents. Kleinfield obtained their permission to follow them around—in and out of the facility—and so this simple story emerged. There are no real high, lows, climaxes or conundrums. (Margaret does not die; Elvis does not subsequently go off to study geriatric medicine at Harvard.) Instead, the volume has the feel of a photo album with accompanying captions. We see Margaret in her room sharing jokes with Elvis and giving him gentle advice (have a plan in life, look out for number one). The two discuss Republicans (both hate the GOP) and rap music; Elvis tries to explain to her what a cell phone is. We also venture out into the mean streets with Elvis. He fathers a daughter with a woman he does not love (Margaret advises him to keep his distance from the mother); he visits his brother’s barber shop; he tries college; he hangs out with friends; he watches many cartoons; he writes dreadful rap lyrics, one of which he performs for Margaret, who asks: “You thought all that up yourself?” He battles a bad back, lassitude, stereotype.

At times trite and a tad portentous, the writing nonetheless reveals two sincere souls.

Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2005

ISBN: 0-8050-7580-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Times/Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
THE POET OF TOLSTOY PARK
by Sonny Girard

- BOOK REVIEW
DEAD IN 5 HEARTBEATS
by Sonny Girard with Keith Zimmerman & Kent Zimmerman

- BOOK REVIEW
STORIES FROM THE BLUE MOON CAFÉ
edited by Sonny Girard

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

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...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)