A simple but engaging Christian memoir.
A series of gentle reminiscences about the author’s childhood and early adulthood.
Thompson’s slim debut autobiography takes the form of a series of quick sketches of different moments in her life. She begins with various childhood adventures that she had as part of a military family, which she embellishes with novelistic touches of dialogue, imbuing them with warmth and immediacy. For instance, she tells of playing with dolls in North Carolina while news of the Vietnam War unfolded on television or of a stray cat, Peanuts, that she and her sister found, then lost, then found again. She enlivens these early reminiscences with relatable anecdotes and quips; surely she wasn’t the only young person to think “wall-to-wall carpet” meant that there was carpet on the walls, for example. She also very naturally weaves her personal Christian faith into these vignettes, with none of the heavy-handedness that often characterizes faith-anchored memoirs; as a result, nonreligious readers will find it easy to enjoy. Later chapters move forward to the author’s time at the University of Georgia and some of her experiences with Campus Crusade for Christ, including specific details about living a religious life on a bustling college campus. She also offers stories about adjusting to her commission in the U.S. Army Reserve: “Making new friends was easy,” she writes, “there is nothing like the camaraderie in the military.” Her tales of life as an Army medical services officer are among the most engaging in the book: “The air circulating underneath our fatigues made us all look like inflatable dolls,” she jokes at one point, when her group is onboard a helicopter. Thompson alternates between job stories and faith stories with easy, relaxed skill, which makes both aspects feel mutually reinforcing; the familiar, quotidian rituals of bowling leagues and driving lessons, for example, not only glow with happy memories, but also with lessons of faith.
A simple but engaging Christian memoir.Pub Date: June 7, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 78
Publisher: River of Life Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Career and business advice for the hashtag generation. For all its self-absorption, this book doesn’t offer much reflection...
A Dumpster diver–turned-CEO details her rise to success and her business philosophy.
In this memoir/business book, Amoruso, CEO of the Internet clothing store Nasty Gal, offers advice to young women entrepreneurs who seek an alternative path to fame and fortune. Beginning with a lengthy discussion of her suburban childhood and rebellious teen years, the author describes her experiences living hand to mouth, hitchhiking, shoplifting and dropping out of school. Her life turned around when, bored at work one night, she decided to sell a few pieces of vintage clothing on eBay. Fast-forward seven years, and Amoruso was running a $100 million company with 350 employees. While her success is admirable, most of her advice is based on her own limited experiences and includes such hackneyed lines as, “When you accept yourself, it’s surprising how much other people will accept you, too.” At more than 200 pages, the book is overlong, and much of what the author discusses could be summarized in a few tweets. In fact, much of it probably has been: One of the most interesting sections in the book is her description of how she uses social media. Amoruso has a spiritual side, as well, and she describes her belief in “chaos magic” and “sigils,” a kind of wishful-thinking exercise involving abstract words. The book also includes sidebars featuring guest “girlbosses” (bloggers, Internet entrepreneurs) who share equally clichéd suggestions for business success. Some of the guidance Amoruso offers for interviews (don’t dress like you’re going to a nightclub), getting fired (don’t call anyone names) and finding your fashion style (be careful which trends you follow) will be helpful to her readers, including the sage advice, “You’re not special.”
Career and business advice for the hashtag generation. For all its self-absorption, this book doesn’t offer much reflection or insight.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16927-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
A potent depiction of grief, but also a book lacking the originality and acerbic prose that distinguished Didion’s earlier...
A moving record of Didion’s effort to survive the death of her husband and the near-fatal illness of her only daughter.
In late December 2003, Didion (Where I Was From, 2003, etc.) saw her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, hospitalized with a severe case of pneumonia, the lingering effects of which would threaten the young woman’s life for several months to come. As her daughter struggled in a New York ICU, Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, suffered a massive heart attack and died on the night of December 30, 2003. For 40 years, Didion and Dunne shared their lives and work in a marriage of remarkable intimacy and endurance. In the wake of Dunne’s death, Didion found herself unable to accept her loss. By “magical thinking,” Didion refers to the ruses of self-deception through which the bereaved seek to shield themselves from grief—being unwilling, for example, to donate a dead husband’s clothes because of the tacit awareness that it would mean acknowledging his final departure. As a poignant and ultimately doomed effort to deny reality through fiction, that magical thinking has much in common with the delusions Didion has chronicled in her several previous collections of essays. But perhaps because it is a work of such intense personal emotion, this memoir lacks the mordant bite of her earlier work. In the classics Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968) and The White Album (1979), Didion linked her personal anxieties to her withering dissection of a misguided culture prey to its own self-gratifying fantasies. This latest work concentrates almost entirely on the author’s personal suffering and confusion—even her husband and daughter make but fleeting appearances—without connecting them to the larger public delusions that have been her special terrain.
A potent depiction of grief, but also a book lacking the originality and acerbic prose that distinguished Didion’s earlier writing.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4314-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
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