paper 0-8032-6382-1 A prequel to Chamoiseau’s School Days (1997), this slim, sometimes rambling, sometimes stirringly poignant account covers the novelist’s (Texaco, 1997, etc.) early childhood between first cognition and education. Writing about himself in the third person as “the boy,” Chamoiseau savors the smallest recollected details of Martinique’s rich Creole culture. From the limber patois and its incantatory intonations to irrefrangible smells and savory tastes, the island holds a spell over him that is more about the man than the boy. Yet Chamoiseau is too clear-eyed to revel in childhood’s lost sensual word. The man knows it is inextricably limned in by amorality, heedless cruelty, and intimations of mortality. There is the annual family pig, much beloved, carefully fed, honored with a name, and which still makes its way to the Christmas table. There is the constant struggle of his mother, Ma Ninotte, to stay out of debt. And when she’s deeply in debt to a particular merchant, it is the boy who is sent in her stead to do the shopping. There is the boy’s holy war, fed by rocks and matches, against insects and rats, which ends when he realizes he cannot kill an aging rat, which he calls the Old Man: “They [the rats] transformed the little boy’s nature. Beneath the killer lay the makings of someone who is incapable of doing the slightest harm to the most despicable of the green flies.” This account does suffer from the problem inherent in most recollections of earliest childhood: once you—re past the luxurious tapestry of details and burgeoning awareness, there isn—t much else beyond disparate anecdotes. It can and does get boring fast. Chamoiseau’s style is an unusual and effective blend of high and low French and Creole, but despite translator Volk’s best efforts, it doesn—t quite come across in English, seeming more precious and affected than original. This autobiographical fragment may not dim Chamoiseau’s growing reputation but it won—t illuminate it either.
Pub Date: Feb. 25, 1999
ISBN: 0-8032-1487-1
Page Count: 123
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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