Ends somewhat abruptly, but for the most part a real page-turner.
Highly readable account of an innocuous business trip to Russia that resulted in a two-year stretch in jail.
British businessman Hague begins with his July 2003 arrest in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo 2 airport, where he was pulled aside after a tiny amount of hashish was found in his luggage. Unaware that a bribe would likely have secured his freedom, he subsequently endured punishing incarceration in various jails, while his physical and mental well-being slowly deteriorated. The author limns the failings of the Russian justice system in meticulous detail, drawing on the copious notes he made during his time behind bars. His story makes alarming reading. Along the way he met some colorful fellow prisoners who were in much worse shape than he. An eternal optimist named Zubi taught Hague how to survive on the inside, and he struck up a genuine friendship with a character named Boodoo John. Hague’s faraway parents and ever-faithful girlfriend Lucy supplied him with materials to bribe the authorities, who eventually permitted him and Lucy to get married in the brutal surroundings of a Mordovian jail. The book is replete with insights conveyed through small details, such as the incredible trouble taken to conceal Zubi’s smuggled cell phone. Hague depicts his Russian jailers in Zone 22 as unscrupulous roughnecks, just as trapped within the system as the prisoners they presided over. Their meager wages meant they could never have afforded the items he gave them as bribes: computers, a bed and huge cartons of cigarettes. The author comes across as a likable guy who should never have found himself in such a predicament; his Everyman quality makes the memoir work, although a few pages about his post-prison life would have been welcome.
Ends somewhat abruptly, but for the most part a real page-turner.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-592-40375-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gotham Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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
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