Take a photo of a barcode or cover
kalkie 's review for:
The Pursuit of Happyness
by Chris Gardner
After seeing a trailer for this film in the cinema, my interest was piqued in Gardner's seemingly amazing story. Billed as the rise of a previously down-and-out homeless man to successful, multi-millionaire status, I was interested to read his story.
Unfortunately I don't feel the book (nor the film, judging by my OH's review of it on the flight home from our honeymoon) lived up to the hype one little bit.
The book starts off interestingly enough, with some background into Gardner's life with his mother and step-father, who is an abusive drunk. The whole family suffer from his step-father's outrages, not least of which his mother - who suffers at his hands more than once, and is sent to prison for retaliating. It is a story to tug on the heart strings.
The second part of the book then follows Chris' life away from the family unit, and his life through the navy and into stockbroking where he eventually made his fortune. His rise is certainly admirable, and he worked hard to achieve it.
During all of this, however, there is a backdrop surrounding his life with his wife, then subsequently with another lover - with whom he has his son, Chris Jr. After suffering at the hands of his step-father he vows never to be like that with his children, and is committed to being a stable father figure for them. However he ends up as a single-father and is homeless, living on the streets with his son and trying to earn enough money to get a house and daycare for him.
This is where the book starts to annoy me.
He seems committed to having children in a "stable" relationship, and makes a big deal out of this time and time again through the book. However, is a child with a father and absent mother really any better off than a child with a mother and absent father? It seems he is trying to take a moral high-ground where there is none. Once he gets higher up the echelons of success, he also then returns his children (as he has a second child during a visit from the son's mother) he seems willing to return the children to their mother (who they hardly know) on the other side of the country to further his career. Again, he seems to be taking this as some kind of moral high-ground when I struggle to see where that is exactly.
Alongside that, from the moment he leaves his family we hear no mention of them or how they are doing, and after introducing his mother, siblings, aunts and uncles to us so readily earlier on in the book, they disappear without a mention.
Finally, the best daycare centre in his area, and the one to which he aspires to getting a place for his son, is the one which cannot spell "happiness" and is the one which sparks the title of the book. that also irritated me as why would you want to place your child in a daycare facility like that!!!!!
It makes it a frustrating read, and not one which I would recommend to others."
Unfortunately I don't feel the book (nor the film, judging by my OH's review of it on the flight home from our honeymoon) lived up to the hype one little bit.
The book starts off interestingly enough, with some background into Gardner's life with his mother and step-father, who is an abusive drunk. The whole family suffer from his step-father's outrages, not least of which his mother - who suffers at his hands more than once, and is sent to prison for retaliating. It is a story to tug on the heart strings.
The second part of the book then follows Chris' life away from the family unit, and his life through the navy and into stockbroking where he eventually made his fortune. His rise is certainly admirable, and he worked hard to achieve it.
During all of this, however, there is a backdrop surrounding his life with his wife, then subsequently with another lover - with whom he has his son, Chris Jr. After suffering at the hands of his step-father he vows never to be like that with his children, and is committed to being a stable father figure for them. However he ends up as a single-father and is homeless, living on the streets with his son and trying to earn enough money to get a house and daycare for him.
This is where the book starts to annoy me.
He seems committed to having children in a "stable" relationship, and makes a big deal out of this time and time again through the book. However, is a child with a father and absent mother really any better off than a child with a mother and absent father? It seems he is trying to take a moral high-ground where there is none. Once he gets higher up the echelons of success, he also then returns his children (as he has a second child during a visit from the son's mother) he seems willing to return the children to their mother (who they hardly know) on the other side of the country to further his career. Again, he seems to be taking this as some kind of moral high-ground when I struggle to see where that is exactly.
Alongside that, from the moment he leaves his family we hear no mention of them or how they are doing, and after introducing his mother, siblings, aunts and uncles to us so readily earlier on in the book, they disappear without a mention.
Finally, the best daycare centre in his area, and the one to which he aspires to getting a place for his son, is the one which cannot spell "happiness" and is the one which sparks the title of the book. that also irritated me as why would you want to place your child in a daycare facility like that!!!!!
It makes it a frustrating read, and not one which I would recommend to others."