by Loree Rackstraw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 11, 2009
Though tendentious, Rackstraw’s account offers enough interesting material on Vonnegut and his work to please his many fans.
Adorning her text with enough exclamation points to resemble an exuberant teen’s diary, the author recounts her long relationship with the noted American novelist.
It began in September 1965 when Rackstraw, a single mother, was enrolled in the married Vonnegut’s fiction class at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Coy about the extent of their intimacy, she remarks only that they “broke a couple of taboos that first year.” She remembers a bird singing when he first embraced her in a bucolic Iowa grove. She tells some Workshop stories: Parties at Andre Dubus’s place were “great”; Nelson Algren was cruel to one of her classmates; Richard Yates had issues. Rackstraw eventually married again, and she became friends with Vonnegut’s first wife, Jane, and their children. The author, however, remains cool throughout to Jill Krementz, the writer’s second wife, and recalls times when Vonnegut planned to divorce her. Rackstraw acknowledges her friend’s emotional, depressive side—he took negative criticism poorly and became gloomy at weak sales or rejections—but also highlights how hard he worked to write prose that seemed effortless. His later novels in particular, she notes, went through multiple false starts. The memoir reveals some questionable ethics on its author’s part as well: She wrote very favorable reviews of some Vonnegut novels for the North American Review, and readers may wonder if she told her editors the extent of her intimacy with him. Rackstraw follows Vonnegut’s career chronologically, reporting what he published, where he spoke (how the crowds loved him!) and what he wrote and said to her—all in terms most flattering to both parties. She quotes few letters in their entirety but does not neglect, for instance, to quote Vonnegut’s occasional encomiums to her intelligence and achievements.
Though tendentious, Rackstraw’s account offers enough interesting material on Vonnegut and his work to please his many fans.Pub Date: April 11, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-306-81803-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2009
Share your opinion of this book
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.