Strong potential, poor execution.
An 18th-century affair in Venice revealed in the lovers’ myriad letters, some only recently discovered.
The story seems to contain all the necessary elements for a riveting tale: a beautiful young woman, a charming, upwardly mobile Venetian politician, forbidden love, clandestine meetings, help from Casanova (yes, that one), covert correspondence, a surprise pregnancy, a suspicious mother, treacherous servants, seclusion in a convent, a mystery child who disappears from history, a republic in decline—and, remarkably, so many extant letters. Some had been previously archived due to the protagonists’ modest historical importance: Giustiniana Wynne, an Anglo-Venetian of illegitimate birth (and thus unable to marry above her without some political machinations), had gone on to write several books; and her lover, Andrea Memmo, had nearly won the office of doge. The author’s father, a descendant of Memmo, had recently uncovered in the old family palazzo even more letters that had lain untouched for centuries, but he did not live to realize his dream of writing about the affair. Now di Robilant, an Italian journalist, has completed the project to problematic effect. The main difficulty is the narration; the author cannot decide how to approach the subject. At times it reads like a romance novel (“she was radiant in her brocaded evening cape”), at others like a memoir, an epistolary novel, a strangely prudish biography, or an informal cultural history. Sometimes di Robilant summarizes the letters, sometimes he prints lengthy excerpts that too often fail to do more than reveal the banality of the situation and the vacuousness of the lovers. Despite a few provocative details—Andrea sent letters containing semen samples and confessed anxieties about excessive masturbation—the tone is generally bland; even Casanova comes across as a rather dull bird on a bare branch.
Strong potential, poor execution.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-41181-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
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
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
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