A sweet but not saccharine recollection of a happy Victorian childhood in England, replete with stern nannies, sausage breakfasts, loving parents, and indulgent grandparents. Appearing in the US for the first time, this 1931 volume is one of a series of Thirkell's works, including more than 30 novels that are being reissued here. In this memoir Thirkell recalls the time and places in which she spent her turn-of-the- century childhood. She was the granddaughter of painter Edward Burne-Jones, one of the inner circle of pre-Raphaelite artists and poets that included Gabriel Rossetti and designer William Morris. The three houses are those of her parents in London's Kensington section, of her grandparents in what is now West Kensington, plus a seaside home where the family spent its summers. From the nursery window of her parents' home—next door to an historic pub—Thirkell could watch the panorama on Kensington Square, including a parade of colorful street performers. Sometimes the family would visit neighbors, among them the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, ``Aunt Stella'' to Thirkell. On winter Sundays, Thirkell's family would lunch with her grandparents in a house that once belonged to 18th-century novelist Samuel Richardson. Visitors came and went, among them Princess Alexandra, while the children played in the orchard or occasionally slipped into their grandfather's forbidden studio, where a manikin with a papier-mÉchÇ head titillated them. Most beloved was the house at the sea. Full of nooks and crannies where the children created great adventures, it was just across from the home where cousin Rudyard Kipling's family was ensconced. Offering memories of a childhood as romantic and rich as her grandfather's paintings, Thirkell leavens the lushness with some tart observations about the arbitrary strictures of Victorian life. Tales of a domestic happiness—a refreshing foil to the current wave of tales of abusive and narcissistic families.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-55921-215-2
Page Count: 134
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
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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