Admirably researched, continuously absorbing, and very moving indeed.
An imposingly original first novel that focuses on unique historical figures: the eponymous Siamese twin brothers (1811–74) who endured opprobrium and despair, became international celebrities, married two American sisters, and fathered 21 children between them.
Their amazing story is told by Eng, the more introspective and articulate of the brothers (who are joined at the chest by a fleshy ligament that gradually expands to permit them to rest side by side rather than facing). Eng's narrative, which begins with `the event I have feared since we were a child,` consists of two extended parallel stories: that of the twins' childhood on a houseboat on the Mekong River, appropriation by the epicurean King of Siam, at whose court they are educated and indulged, and their career as traveling `freaks` in America (where showman P.T. Barnum covets their services) and abroad; and that of their adult life in antebellum North Carolina, where they marry the aforementioned (Yates) sisters, prosper as hog farmers and slave owners, and eventually `separate` emotionally, as the ingenuous Chang sinks into alcoholism and Eng must wrestle with both his brother's degradation and his own guilty lust for his brother's wife. In harrowing detail, Strauss has imagined the physical adjustments required of the twins to perform even the simplest quotidian tasks, as well as the psychic strain their `monstrous` condition creates, and he explores with cool precision the equally crippling temperamental contrasts between Chang's ebullient naiveté and Eng's increasing capacity for deceit and emotional coldness. Occasionally the author shows his hand too plainly (for example, when Eng observes that `The birth of our children intersected with an odd time for America`). Nonetheless, he presents with impressive delicacy and restraint the unavoidable felt connection between the American Civil War and the brothers' own simultaneously united and divided state.
Admirably researched, continuously absorbing, and very moving indeed.Pub Date: June 5, 2000
ISBN: 0-525-94512-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
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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