Refreshingly, Stadiem mostly avoids making the narrative overly gossipy, and it’s good fun to see what devils some of our...
An eye-opening biography of “the elegant French Queen of Sex.”
As she reflected on her legendary career, Madame Claude (1923-2015) opened up to screenwriter and biographer Stadiem (Jet Set: The People, the Planes, the Glamour, and the Romance in Aviation's Glory Years, 2014, etc.) about her life. The author opens with the tale of her arranging one of her “swans” to meet with President John F. Kennedy during his time in Paris. Beginning in 1957, Madame developed an entirely new outlook on the sex industry. Her requirements were simple and rigid: Her girls, never to be called prostitutes, had to be beautiful, tall, intelligent, and good in bed. They were the cover girls next door, mostly from the upper classes. Madame sent them for teeth straightening, plastic surgery, and lessons in diction, dance, music, and even skiing. When they were perfect, they would earn more than enough to repay Madame, or they would find a husband to pay off the sizable debt incurred. She knew enough to deal only with wealthy customers, and she charged accordingly, taking a 30 percent commission. She never had a problem recruiting swans; they came to her. Their motivation at first was cash-based. Eventually, as the author shows, she developed her brand, and girls flocked to her, submitting to her candid, sometimes-vicious appraisals. At the beginning of her career, two developments created her market: the telephone and the jet set crowd. The oil embargo of the 1970s brought oil-based wealth. Her contacts included sheiks, movie stars, nobility, and heads of state. Her business flourished tax free, but she was careful in her dealings. Charles de Gaulle’s government, as well as those that followed, artfully ignored her business, and she even met weekly with the police and shared intelligence. She never entertained, socialized, or allowed drugs; she just connected rich men with their fantasies.
Refreshingly, Stadiem mostly avoids making the narrative overly gossipy, and it’s good fun to see what devils some of our political and cultural heroes really were.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-12238-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
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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