A study- with newly interpreted evidence from his own writings and other sources- of the tragic brother of the gifted Bronte sisters, this throws fresh light on the dour background, the home life- less grim than usually pictured- and, unfortunately, the limitations of medical knowledge in handling Branwell's undoubted epilepsy. Largely, however, Daphne du Maurier has chosen to recreate the "Infernal world" which Branwell and Emily had made so much their own from childhood on that the Nagrian tales, as they are called, mirrored the overlapping of truth and fiction, of a lost identity, which plagued Branwell throughout his brief and tortured life. Failures contributed to his breakdown and at twenty five he faced an empty life, his paintings ignored, his writings inadequate, his health irreparably damaged by the use of drugs and liquor to alleviate the congenital weaknesses. This is an odd book for Daphne du Maurier to have undertaken, unless the weird fascination of the Bronte story found answering echo in her own attraction to somewhat morbid settings and themes. Her craftsmanship has made of the material something more than a case of literary research; almost one feels that she is unravelling a long distorted mystery. But it is unlikely that even her name will achieve for it the wide and sure popularity of her earlier work.
Pub Date: March 10, 1961
ISBN: 1844080757
Page Count: 295
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1961
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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