An overlong but relentlessly candid and often absorbing account of a complex life spent in and out of the fashion spotlight.
The essayist, critic, novelist, and former editor-in-chief of Paris Vogue reflects on the triumphs and excesses of her fashionable past.
As the only child of celebrated parents, Buck (Daughter of the Swan, 1987, etc.) enjoyed a privileged upbringing among many of the 20th century’s more notable celebrities. Her father, Jules Buck, was a Hollywood producer perhaps best known for helping to launch Peter O’Toole’s early film career. In sometimes-meandering detail, the author relives her restless years as she established an esteemed reputation as a writer and authority on fashion and culture. There’s some excessive name-dropping as Buck references numerous Hollywood and fashion elites in quick succession, yet rarely does she pause for many of these individuals—e.g., Donald Sutherland and Brian De Palma—to spring to life on these pages. Throughout the book, the author explores her complicated and evolving relationship with her parents. Her father, in particular, asserted a domineering influence even as his increasingly erratic behavior in later years weighed on her existence as a burden—but also a reliable touchstone. Buck’s narrative gathers focus and momentum when she lands the Vogue position in her late 40s. Within these chapters, she provides acute, illuminating observations on the challenges of running a fashion magazine and of the pretensions of the industry. Her description of Susan Train, Vogue’s Paris bureau chief, provides an uncompromising glimpse into this world: “She fielded the daily telexes from New York demanding a dress, a photographer, a model, a star, a location, a car, a different car, a different dress, a chateau instead of a house, not that chateau, the other chateau, visas for Yemen, customs declarations, tissue paper, dangerous wildlife, rare flowers, rarer flowers, bushes, buds, trees, photogenic children of impeccable pedigree. She flawlessly navigated the chasms of rage that roiled in the heart of every fashion player. Even the messengers were touchy.”
An overlong but relentlessly candid and often absorbing account of a complex life spent in and out of the fashion spotlight.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4767-6294-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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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