Miss du Maurier, prolific author—of novels, travel books, biographies, short stories, plays—here indulges herself (her phrase) by writing out her "thoughts, impressions, and actions" from the age of three until the publication of her first novel, and her marriage, at twenty-five, in an engaging foreword, she hopes to encourage "young writers, as unsure of themselves as I once was, to try their hand." One wishes the book might have that effect, but there may be a generation and class gap impeding. After ali, Daphne, the second of a trio of engaging girls, was the daughter of the famous actor-producer Gerald du Maurier and the granddaughter of the author of those nearly forgotton novels, Trilby and Peter Ibbetson. She was a baby in an age of nannies and prams, and entered society in time to dance with that Prince of Wales who ended up as Duke of Windsor. A creative family, a warm matrix against which young Daphne was always rebelling. Her adolescent diaries show her as withdrawn, withdrawing, from the lively family circle, to read, write, and act out her fantasies of adventure, peril, escape—with an overturned chair for a man-o'-war, and her younger sister's friends as willing actors. In the second half of the book, she merely strings journal entries together; in the first, undocumented half, she does a brilliant job of rethinking, recreating, a child in her world. The moral? She is a better novelist than journal-keeper.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1977
ISBN: 184408096X
Page Count: 195
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1977
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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