In its copious details, this lovingly researched portrait of paradise highlights the colorful glitz and too-familiar...
A gleaming social history of the French Riviera in the 1930s, “probably the heyday of the Riviera in its modern sense.”
In her latest, De Courcy (The Husband Hunters: American Heiresses Who Married Into the British Aristocracy, 2018, etc.) delivers portraits of a variety of wealthy social circles with the voyeurism of a who’s-who society column. The author portrays American vacationers and European artists, writers, socialites, intellectuals, and public figures, including the Prince of Wales, Wallis Simpson, Jean Cocteau, and Winston Churchill. Coco Chanel—who, according to De Courcy, embodied "France's prestige"—is an alluring if elusive narrative hook. Accounts of her La Pausa home, her lovers, and her stays at the Ritz in Paris punctuate the text, from which she's often absent. The author gives much attention to extramarital affairs, entertaining affectations, and opiate addictions. Quotations from period diaries and letters enliven the narrative, though the overall effect is light and gossipy. De Courcy’s discussion of Chanel's fashion rival, Elsa Schiaparelli, briefly brings the focus back to the titular character. At times, the author fetishizes the bygone glamour that characterized the landscape; Marlene Dietrich, for example, is deemed "the blonde to end all blondes." The rise of the Nazis serves mostly as historical background, and the author offers a reasonable consideration of Chanel's anti-Semitism. Later sections about English expatriates' struggles to flee, deportations, and collaborators in France revisit horrors and miraculous survivals, showing a clear rift between the rich—who experienced minor deprivations yet carried on much as before—and the people who were severely impacted. The unavoidable disjuncture between Chanel's privileged world and the one just outside it leads to a somewhat uneven narrative that will turn off many readers but appeal to those fascinated by the rich and famous.
In its copious details, this lovingly researched portrait of paradise highlights the colorful glitz and too-familiar blindness of the ultrarich.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-17707-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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