Affectionate, workmanlike, but disappointing biography of the woman aptly described by Roger Vadim as ``Eve before God lost his temper in the Garden of Eden.'' As much a sociological event as a movie star, Brigitte Bardot transformed modern notions of sex as a subject for movies and as a paradigm for existence. Her mentors, particularly director and first husband Vadim, certainly helped to create the Bardot phenomenon. But Robinson (Yamani, 1989, etc.) shows that the actress's fame arose primarily from the force of her stunning yet simple beauty and her complex yet innocent nature. Unfortunately, his unambitious book does little to elucidate her character. In fairly pedestrian prose, he covers Bardot's life from her birth in Paris in 1934 to her quiet existence today in St. Tropez and her controversial marriage to Bernard d'Ormale, who is associated with ultranationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen. Robinson delineates Bardot's wildly dichotomous personality, her naive narcissism, her many lovers and husbands, her heartfelt advocacy of animal rights, and the relentless harassment she endured from the media and fans alike. Most of the events described in the book are interesting. Some, such as the relentless publicity surrounding her pregnancy in 1959 (journalists even tried bribing doctors to let them into the delivery room), are horrifying. Yet all but the most avid fans will eventually find Robinson's narrative tedious and repetitious. What little analysis there is—a discussion of French women's use of sex as a weapon, the claim that Bardot was the unwitting forebear of the women's movement—proves fleeting and shallow. Similarly, the author provides no insight into Bardot's films, not even ones as famous as Vadim's And God Created Woman and Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin-FÇminin. Despite his best efforts to the contrary, Robinson leaves one feeling that perhaps there really is no more to Bardot than meets the eye. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 5, 1995
ISBN: 1-55611-452-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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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