Du Maurier's final book (she died last April) is both a personal memoir and a love letter to Cornwall, which served as inspiration for—and setting of—much of her popular fiction (Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, etc.). In 1926, teen-aged Daphne and her mother and sisters took their first extended visit to the region, buying as odd Alpine-style house overlooking Fowey harbor. Daphne befriended the locals, watched ships come and go in the harbor, and drank tea with sailors. On a walk up the river, she found the hulk of an abandoned schooner, the Jane Slade: her musings about its history became the core of her first novel, The Loving Spirit. An army major who loved the book headed to Cornwall to meet its author: within months of their first date—a spray-drenched outing on his launch—they were engaged. Years passed, du Maurier's atmospheric novels became popular favorites, she continued to explore. One of her favorite walk destinations was an ancient, now empty house, set deep in the woods and surrounded by scarlet rhododendrons, which would serve as the model for Manderley, the great house in Rebecca Here, Du Maurier writes of all this with passion: it was in Cornwall, she says, that "I found myself both as a writer and a person." And she intersperses reminiscences with brief excerpts from her novels—some of which stand on their own, some of which don't. Although the text is probably of interest mostly to hard-core fans, more than a hundred truly gorgeous photographs broaden the appeal: prospective travelers will find itinerary inspiration, and anyone who loves the outdoors may relish a quick browse through the misty moors, seascapes, and woods of this wild and peaceful region.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1989
ISBN: 0718134788
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1989
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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