Uneven but will satisfy curiosity regarding the tawdry reality of childhood within a criminal family.
Biography of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar (1949-1993) by his understandably conflicted son.
Escobar, an Argentina-based architect and subject of the documentary Sins of My Father, sees his father’s infamy alongside qualities of a devoted family man: “he always had us in his heart, even as he used terror to intimidate his enemies.” The author intends not to detail his father’s smuggling empire but to document the fuller life of the man—and settle some scores regarding his father’s siblings. He says at the outset, “I wish to publicly ask my father’s victims…for forgiveness.” In his view, neither Escobar’s rural youth nor early years as an enterprising small-time criminal prefaced his war against society. By 1975, early forays into cocaine smuggling made him a young millionaire; years of success followed, giving the author a childhood of absurd luxury. However, in 1982, Escobar erred in entering politics. “He mistakenly believed that he could traffic drugs while also holding a seat in Congress,” he writes. Over the next two years, his public exposure led to calls for prosecution and extradition, provoking Escobar toward a campaign of bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings. Eventually, he became a fugitive (often accompanied by his family) and expanded his war to the Cali cartel. This part of the narrative becomes jumbled, as Escobar simultaneously negotiates with the government and pursues violent schemes through a dwindling cadre of followers. “I felt powerless in the face of my father’s brutal methods,” writes the author. “He no longer listened to anyone’s advice.” Following Escobar’s inevitable-seeming demise, the author and his mother had to negotiate for their lives with his enemies. Escobar writes earnestly, relying on descriptive detail, though it can feel artificially reconstructed, particularly regarding the often stagey dialogue. The author is unable to explain how the warm, quirky father he presents and the criminal who normalized widespread violence within drug smuggling are the same person. This results in frequent dissonance.
Uneven but will satisfy curiosity regarding the tawdry reality of childhood within a criminal family.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-10462-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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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