An atmospheric description of life in Belgrade, notwithstanding a few stylistic failings.
Radovic’s (Vuka: Destination Alaska, 2016) memoir tells the story of five boys growing up in mid-20th-century Yugoslavia.
This remembrance opens on Sept. 6, 1965, when the author enrolled at the First Belgrade Gymnasium, a school situated in the capital of what was then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He soon bonded with four other boys: Serge, Zee, Jo, and Dee. Together, they formed a tight group called the Belgrade Five. The memoir chronicles two years of their lives together, which, in certain respects, reflect the lives of most teenage boys, punctuated by school pranks, soccer, and a burning desire for the opposite sex. What makes this book engaging is its setting: a country that the author describes in a preface as a place that “no longer exists” and “belonged more to the East than to the West, but mostly to itself.” The author captures beautifully what it meant to be a teenager in 1960s Belgrade, including the minute details of daily life in the kafana (a type of bistro): “smoke-filled, and desolate…a pressurized beer dispenser and several spherical spittoons on stands.” Yet there’s also the pull of Western culture: the author had a significant collection of rock records, ranging from the Beatles to the Shadows; “The best rock groups are British,” he told Jo. However, despite successfully capturing a unique moment in European history, this memoir fails to establish distinct identities for the boys, and it’s therefore difficult to follow their individual plights. This is compounded by the flat dialogue, which doesn’t modulate from character to character and often seems textbooklike, as when Jo discusses a soccer team: “Their coach Arribas insists on one-touch offensive and collective play called jeu a la Nantaise, without excessive dribbling or possession.” But although the staccato dialogue lacks the fluidity of true conversation, it doesn’t negate the book’s overall appeal. It’s still a passionate love letter to a city, a school, and a group of close friends, and it will attract readers with even a vague interest in Eastern European cities of the pre-perestroika era.
An atmospheric description of life in Belgrade, notwithstanding a few stylistic failings.Pub Date: June 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5246-9707-5
Page Count: 246
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
