A bleak, plainly told, but admirable recovery memoir.
A young Texas woman tells of falling into addiction in South Florida.
When Rose left Tombstone, Texas, on a bus in the mid-1980s, she says, she was fleeing a childhood marked by parental violence and her own early flirtations with substance abuse. Her destination was Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a place that sounded like paradise to her: “I drifted off to sleep thinking about the beautiful, blue ocean I would soon swim in.” After working for a while as a waitress, she trained as a technician on an assembly line at a Boca Raton personal-computer company. At 20, she was proud to be the only woman on the line, and she soon rose through the company’s ranks. Around the same time, she began a relationship with a man named Jared who introduced her to cocaine; her resulting addiction destroyed her promising career and led her to sex work and a crack cocaine habit. Did she have in it her to leave her new demons behind? Rose writes in a conversational prose style that gives readers a darkly authentic view of her hard everyday life in the 1980s and ’90s: “This was my first real exchange of sex for money, and just for a second, I almost felt bad enough to never do it again, but at that moment, the cravings overcame the morals, and I had the money to get high. I went straight to the nearest street dealer I could spot.” Rose also shows how she found strength in her Christian faith, which she references throughout her remembrance, although the book’s purpose isn’t explicitly religious. Readers will be struck by the author’s accounts of deep suffering and horrible luck, which contrast starkly with brief moments of optimism and self-sufficiency. Her ultimate successful recovery makes this memoir an affecting portrait of humble resilience.
A bleak, plainly told, but admirable recovery memoir.Pub Date: March 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73203-310-8
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Tiffy Rose LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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