Review: How Starbucks Saved My Life, by Michael Gates Gill

I initially found out about this book when Michael Gates Gill was interviewed on NPR a couple of weeks ago. Since I am a complete Starbucks-a-holic, I was intrigued by his story, so I decided to check out the book.

How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else is Gill's memoir of his immense fall from the social elite into almost literally nothingness. After being let go from the high-paying advertising job he had been ushered into right after college thanks to the ivy league network, and losing his wife and friends thanks to an affair that led to a child, Gill found himself alone, with no money, no prospects and no way to pay his rent at the age of 63, a time when most people are hoping and planning to retire shortly. Instead, while stewing in his despair at a Starbucks across from his childhood home one day, he ended up meeting a dynamic young African American store manager who eventually gave him a job. A few weeks later, he found himself far from making ad campaign pitches to brass at the Pentagon, instead polishing the brass handles in a local Starbucks bathroom.

Surprisingly, Gill loved his new job, and learned a great deal about himself and others while scrubbing tile. Eventually, he was able to gain confidence and skills, and was promoted to Barista. However, the most important lessons he learned were about wrongs he committed in the past, when he had allowed his perceived class-based superiority to influence everything about his life, including his own hidden feelings of inferiority. Eventually, ironically, he saw that these feelings were warped - he was right to feel that he didn't deserve what he had achieved, but only because the entire basis upon which he had achieved it had been flawed. Gill cultivated a new sense of respect for himself and others, and for the first time in his life, is truly happy.

This was a quick read, and I found it to be very uplifting. While occasionally mildly repetitive, the underlying message was honest and ingratiating. Gill is a well-polished storyteller, and included many anecdotes from his previous jet-setting life about various meetings with the uber-famous, from Jackie Kennedy to Hemingway. These tidbits underscored the huge transition that Gill had made, and yet never came across as self-pitying or yearning for the past. Gill's transformation is believable, and certainly is a wonderful advertisement for Starbucks in general. I'm mildly surprised that the chain doesn't offer the book for sale in its stores (at least I haven't seen it) as it has various other novels.

Rating: three out of five stars. An interesting, uplifting evening's read.