Emphasizing Chopin’s life and times rather than his music, Szulc’s biography situates the composer and pianist extraordinaire within the circles of European artists, writers, and others who created the Romantic era. Award-winning journalist Szulc’s (The Secret Alliance, 1991, etc.) exploration of Chopin’s character focuses on the 18 years he spent in Paris. He sets his inquiry into the broader framework of Chopin’s times, stressing the unique environment of budding Romanticism that the musician discovered when he eached Paris. This account is divided into three chronological sections, rather romantically labeled “Andante,” “Rondo,” and “Coda.” The first serves as an introduction to Chopin’s Polish-French background and the process by which he effected dramatic entry into French society. Szulc discusses the nature of Chopin’s poor physical health and his questionable mental health, foreshadowing the mental crises and debilitating consumption that marked the last years of his short life. Next Szulc turns to the other two “protagonists” of this biography: the Age of Romanticism and George Sand. Chopin’s famed seven-year affair with Sand is the stuff of legend, and Szulc admirably brings the two fascinating personalities to life through citations from letters and other biographers. Sand’s forceful personality electrifies these pages and almost threatens to overwhelm the enigmatic and far more subtle Chopin. More problematic is Szulc’s presentation of Chopin’s milieu. His declaration that European Romanticism represented a unique and unprecedented merging of art and politics lacks clarity, as the politics of the moment are only superficially explained. His attempt to set Chopin within the Romantic movement isn’t much helped by his prose, which intermittently exhibits a highly romantic (and somewhat awkward) tone. Despite stylistic weaknesses, Szulc’s book offers a readable account of the most creative period of Chopin’s life and of the many geniuses he rubbed shoulders with. He also gives a particularly fine impression of the startling effect that Chopin the pianist had upon his listeners. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-82458-2
Page Count: 426
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
