Decked out like a history, with index and bibliography: a striking, romantic, personal narrative.
An extravagant tale of war and romance, with a decided emphasis on the latter.
Now in her 90s, Travers writes in an “I shall never forget” mode. With remarkable recall, she describes her cold English upbringing and portrays the tenor of society life in Cannes during the 1930s. In 1940 she changed her tennis whites for nurses’ khakis and joined the Free French—who, apparently, were free in lots of ways. She was soon chauffeuring officers in Eritrea along the road to Kub-Kub (a map is provided), but she managed to find the time for various randy encounters and assignations. The liaisons are presented as guileless romance, mind you, not actual sex. Under the nom de guerre of “La Miss,” Travers served as the driver for General Pierre Koenig—a dashing officer who soon became the love of her life. She was with him at Bir Hakeim when that North African outpost was besieged by Rommel; with her General in command, La Miss guided the historic breakout. Her description of the drive, negotiating between land mines and flying bullets, is the central and best part of her story, which really has less to do with military history than romance. She lived with lucky Pierre in domestic bliss during much of the war—but the joy faded with the arrival of the General’s wife. After the war, La Miss became an authentic member of the French Foreign Legion, married a fellow soldier, and raised a family. Now she’d like to tell her grandchildren “what a wicked grandmother they had.” It’s all a bit melodramatic, full of old-fashioned schoolgirl romance, but this is not “Barbara Cartland Goes to War”—for Cartland surely never received, as La Miss did, the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille Militaire.
Decked out like a history, with index and bibliography: a striking, romantic, personal narrative.Pub Date: June 14, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-0001-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
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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