A riveting view of a truly tragic childhood that will leave readers wanting more of the author’s story.
A debut memoir reconstructs the complex and volatile world of an orphanage in 1950s New York City.
At just 4 years old, James and five of his siblings were hurled into the Mount Loretto Staten Island orphanage. Instead of their unstable mother, the kids would now have a series of adult caretakers who alternated wildly among violence, exasperation, and kindness toward the screaming masses of children in their charge. James’ childhood was spent passing from one “house” to the next with each new birthday. His days were filled with rock fights, boxing matches, and futile attempts to escape the cruel torture of older “junior counselor” boys. James would also often venture into the city to see his older sister, June, and their mother. At one point, June even surprised him and his brother David by introducing them to their father. (“It never occurred to me whether I had a father or not,” James writes.) But no one in this family ever provided a real path to a more stable life. Even after leaving the city to live with his older brother Richard in Wyoming, James eventually found his way back to Mount Loretto and the grim realities of an impoverished existence in ’50s New York that awaited the orphanage’s former residents. Overall, James’ memoir focuses most on daily life in the orphanage. He concentrates on the interactions between children, delivering countless scenes of harrowing abuse as well as smaller moments, as when the siblings collectively dream of being rescued by a rich family even though they “all knew it was just a bunch of lies.” In this way, James renders Mount Loretto as a complicated and intriguing place; each adult and all the children introduced by name offer nearly equal moments of both tenderness and savagery. But the world outside the orphanage never feels as well developed. James offers glimpses of his post-orphanage life in ’50s Brooklyn and Spanish Harlem—but there is certainly a lot of room for him to further explore beyond Mount Loretto and its lasting effects.
A riveting view of a truly tragic childhood that will leave readers wanting more of the author’s story.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-60693-911-6
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency, LLC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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