Readable but sometimes maudlin, adding up to not much more than notes for a future biographer.
A portrait of the late Swedish crime novelist by a longtime friend and fellow crusading journalist.
“I’m fifty, damn it!” Thus, writes Kurdish-Swedish writer Baksi, Larsson’s last words. Felled by a heart attack, Larsson—born Karl Stig-Erland Larsson in 1954, his nom de guerre a teenage adaptation—had crammed more than a few decades of living into his sleepless days. It should come as no mystery to fans of his work, and particularly of the Millennium Trilogy, that Larsson was fascinated by the dark, hidden corners of Swedish society, and particularly by the neo-Nazi element that lay just beneath the surface and was (and is) more influential than outsiders might ever have expected. Hired as a graphic artist by a newspaper, but then drifting into investigative journalism, Larsson threw himself into the antiracist, antifascist cause, where he met Baksi, the editor of a paper that addressed immigrant issues. Larsson’s devotion to that fight and his assertions that the neo-Nazis had thoroughly infiltrated the Swedish police led to numerous death threats, and he was always in trouble with his editors—for one thing, since he refused to even pretend to objectivity. Baksi attributes his early death to stress, though the 20 cups of coffee and two or three packs of cigarettes he consumed daily probably didn’t help. Larsson’s antifascist journalism defined him, but readers outside Sweden will take greater interest in the genesis of his crime novels. Baksi provides only a little insight there, noting that Larsson composed all three books in the trilogy at the same time, writing a chapter in one book, then a chapter in the second, then a chapter in the third; he also enumerates Larsson’s many influences, from Harlan Ellison to Elizabeth George.
Readable but sometimes maudlin, adding up to not much more than notes for a future biographer.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60598-174-1
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
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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