An entertaining, well-researched work that will particularly interest students of cultural history and the French Revolution.
A scholarly debut biography that looks at the French Revolution through the eyes of the queen’s hairdresser and confidant.
When Léonard Autié first arrived as a young man in Paris in 1769, he was so short on money that he walked the last 120 miles on foot. His possessions consisted of little more than a few coins, a tortoiseshell comb and “an ample supply of confidence.” Ten years later, after he created the famous “pouf” hairstyle, he was the hairdresser to the queen of France. A decade after that, during the revolution, Autié “took on the dangerous role of messenger and secret liaison between the royal family and their supporters.” Later, forced into exile and financially ruined, he spent a lengthy sojourn in Russia, where he worked as hairdresser to the nobility (and even arranged the hair of Czar Paul I’s corpse). He was eventually allowed to return to Paris in 1814, and he died there six years later. Bashor draws on contemporary accounts and letters and particularly Autié’s ghostwritten memoir, purportedly based on his journals and published 18 years after his death. The author notes that the latter source’s dialogue is unverifiable (although he cross-checks it with contemporary sources whenever possible) and that Autié was given to boasting and exaggeration. Fortunately, however, Bashor liberally quotes from the Souvenirs de Léonard, giving his own account a gossipy, entertaining directness, similar to a historical novel. (He also includes a bibliography, endnotes and an index.) Autié’s perspective highlights just how out of touch and frivolous the aristocrats were; for example, when he brings news to Versailles of the fall of the Bastille, he finds the court ladies “oblivious” and “clamoring for his services.” Bashor doesn’t clearly explain the specifics of hair powdering and wig making or how Autié arranged his fantastic poufs (although he does include illustrations), but his depiction of Autié’s fascinating fly-on-the-wall role as confidant to doomed royalty makes up for it. Overall, he delivers an informative examination of a little-known player on a great stage.
An entertaining, well-researched work that will particularly interest students of cultural history and the French Revolution.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-0762791538
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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