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THE DISAPPEARANCE

Name: THE DISAPPEARANCE
Author: Geneviève Jurgensen
ISBN: 0-393-04776-8

A MEMOIR OF LOSS

by Geneviève Jurgensen & translated by Adriana Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1999

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A French mother’s lyrical and haunting memoir of the deaths of her two young daughters and how she has coped with this terrible loss. In 1980 Jurgensen’s daughters, Mathilde (age 7) and Elise (age 4), were killed by a drunk driver. How does one live with the pain and grief of surviving one’s children? How does one express this loss and love in words? The Disappearance is Jurgensen’s unsentimental and candid response to these questions. In a series of letters to a friend written from 1991 to 1993, the author draws an intimate portrait of her life before and after her daughters’ deaths. The epistolary approach serves Jurgensen well, eliciting honest emotions and a lean lyricism. Slowly and sensitively she introduces us to the facts of the tragic accident. We learn about her own reaction to the girls’ deaths and how she managed to continue her life, and about her loving relationship with her husband, Laurent, which helps sustain her in times of deep depression and grief. Jurgensen’s pain is palpable and her book is at times too sad to read without setting it down. One of the most compelling aspects of Jurgensen’s story is how the two dead daughters have remained a presence in the family, even as the family grew with the addition of two subsequent children. From innocent questions about family size to her two younger children’s inquiries and formulations about their “older” siblings, Jurgensen candidly discusses her emotional and rational responses to both strangers and loved ones about her first two daughters. We celebrate with her when an old acquaintance who knew the girls comments when seeing the younger two: “they are so, so alike all four of them.” Jurgensen’s is a powerful voice for the unbearable sadness caused by death and the courage and love it takes to live with both the pain of loss and the cherished memories.

Pub Date: June 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-393-04776-8

Page Count: 168

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.