An authentic voice helps this tale take off.
Knecht’s memoir takes readers up into the rarefied atmosphere of being an international flight attendant with iconic airline Pan American, with its special culture, exotic locales, and quirkiness.
Debut memoirist Knecht is a very engaging schmoozer. After becoming a Pan Am flight attendant just out of college, she planned to work there for a couple of years, then pursue other plans; instead, she remained with Pan Am until its demise in the early 1990s. She took to world travel like a Boeing to the jet stream. Readers also learn about her upbringing and ambitions. In those days, Pan Am ran a tight ship, and esprit de corps was high. There was, of course, some tomfoolery (Knecht is a member of the Five Mile High Club). On the somber side, the hijacking in the title refers to the 1986 hijacking of Pan Am 73 on the tarmac at the Karachi airport. Knecht wasn’t on the flight, but many friends were, including an Indian flight crew whom she had trained and befriended. Knecht tells the story well, capturing the anxiety and horror. After Pan Am, and on a very loose arrangement with its successor, Delta, she became a private flight attendant, serving on private or corporate jets, where she met many celebrities about whom she is now happy to dish. Speaking of dishes, her book also includes recipes for many items from the famous Pan Am menu. Knecht is a competent though not fully polished writer given to clichés. Anecdotes, the life of her memoir, are alternately amusing and somewhat forced, or the reality struggles to survive the telling. Always hovering behind the narrative like a ghost is the downfall of Pan Am—a bittersweet backdrop for such an alluring profession.
An authentic voice helps this tale take off.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-5025-2349-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Told with mettle and intelligence, Sebold’s story of fierce determination to wrest back her life from her rapist will...
A stunningly crafted and unsparing account of the author’s rape as a college freshman and what it took to win her case in court.
In 1981, Sebold was brutally raped on her college campus, at Syracuse University. Sebold, a New York Times Magazinecontributor, now in her 30s, reconstructs the rape and the year following in which her assailant was brought to trial and found guilty. When, months after the rape, she confided in her fiction professor, Tobias Wolff, he advised: “Try, if you can, to remember everything.” Sebold heeded his words, and the result is a memoir that reads like detective fiction, replete with police jargon, economical characterization, and film-like scene construction. Part of Sebold’s ironic luck, besides the fact that she wasn’t killed, was that she was a virgin prior to the rape, she was wearing bulky clothing, and her rapist beat her, leaving unmistakable evidence of violence. Sebold casts a cool eye on these facts: “The cosmetics of rape are central to proving any case.” Sebold critiques the sexism and misconceptions surrounding rape with neither rhetoric nor apology; she lets her experience speak for itself. Her family, her friends, her campus community are all shaken by the brutality she survived, yet Sebold finds herself feeling more affinity with police officers she meets, as it was “in [their] world where this hideous thing had happened to me. A world of violent crime.” Just when Sebold believes she might surface from this world, a close friend is raped and the haunting continues. The last section, “Aftermath,” has an unavoidable tacked-on-at-the-end feel, as Sebold crams over a decade’s worth of coping and healing into a short chapter.
Told with mettle and intelligence, Sebold’s story of fierce determination to wrest back her life from her rapist will inspire and challenge.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-85782-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1999
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IN THE NEWS
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
An intriguing look at an iconoclast’s cultural accomplishments.
Beloved, controversial performer discusses fame and the deeper meanings of his life.
Common, subject of Fox News’ ire following his White House poetry recitation, has long been acclaimed as a thoughtful and deft hip-hop artist. In his memoir—co-authored by Bradley (Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, 2009, etc.)—he suggests great consciousness of the cultural legacy he carries: “Chicago blackness gave me understanding, awareness, street sense, and a rhythm. I learned the way that soulful people move, act, and talk.” He portrays himself as an openhearted, curious kid, trying to understand the tumult of Chicago’s African-American South Side. Obsessed with girls from an early age, he would go to the city’s museums to meet them. At the same time, he was rhyming in private, and he gave up basketball in high school to concentrate on rap, which he saw as similarly competitive. Common writes frankly about his youthful involvement with gang culture, portrayed as an inevitable rite of passage that became increasingly violent: “Crack hit the South Side of Chicago like a balled up fist.” Varied influences—his mother, friends, artistic ambitions—steered him away from it and toward a more “conscious” existence. By 1989, his early demos as Common Sense were drawing industry attention, and he dropped out of college to pursue this calling, over his mother’s objections. Much of what follows is a funny, honest showbiz narrative, moving from hip-hop to film acting. Interestingly, each chapter begins with a “letter” to someone significant in his life: e.g., his mother and father (early chapters discuss their tumultuous relationship), Emmett Till, former girlfriend Erykah Badu and collaborator Kanye West. Additionally, his mother offers occasional italicized counterpoint. As a memoir, the book succeeds based on Common’s candor, intelligence and charm, despite occasional artificial passages and broad platitudes, and he writes powerfully about his connection with President Obama.
An intriguing look at an iconoclast’s cultural accomplishments.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2587-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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