Slick, self-analytical memoirs of a young man who, at considerable pain to his adoptive parents, is driven to find the mother who gave him up at birth. Although Green says that until he was 21 he never thought about his birth mother, he describes himself as a man whose rejection at birth not only shaped his unsavory relations with women but drove him to become a high achiever—class covaledictorian, first-round draft choice of the Atlanta Falcons, published author (The Dark Side of the Game, 1996, etc.), lawyer, and television sportscaster. Epiphany came when he learned that his girlfriend's mother, to whom he was especially close, had once given up a child for adoption. For the next seven years he tried to locate his own mother, and through a combination of persistence, luck, a willingness to trade on his reputation as a football star, and a readiness to ask favors, he finally succeeded. Despite his subject matter, Green's writing packs little emotional punch, and scenes that ought to pull heartstrings fall flat. While achievement and respectability are high priorities for Green, such is apparently not the case with his younger adopted brother, whose erratic job history and disturbing behavior serve as a kind of counterpoint to the author's own success. Green's story thus contains a double warning for adoptive parents: If nature wins out over nurture, you might find yourself raising a loser who will disappoint you; on the other hand, you might raise a winner whose single-minded pursuit of his roots will hurt you. Happily, Green's late grasp of what parenting is all about leads to the beginnings of a reconciliation with his adoptive parents. A book that has the elements of an engaging human drama but, clogged as it is with amateur psychologizing, fails to stir. ($50,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-06-039217-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997
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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