by Philip Ziegler ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 10, 2014
Despite a lack of revelations, this is probably the best Olivier book for general readers.
Veteran biographer Ziegler (Edward Heath, 2010, etc.) offers a well-rounded portrait of the legendary English actor.
Laurence Olivier’s life (1907–1989) has been the subject of innumerable biographies, ranging from innocuous (Anthony Holden, 1988) to scandalous (Donald Spoto, 1992)—not to mention his own weirdly frank yet ultimately unrevealing Confessions of an Actor (1982). Ziegler’s version contains nothing particularly new on Olivier’s earlier years: the rivalry with John Gielgud in Romeo and Juliet, the partnership with Ralph Richardson at the Old Vic (home to Olivier’s greatest performance, in Richard III); his pioneering efforts as a popularizer of Shakespeare on film, most notably with Henry V; and the tragic marriage to Vivien Leigh, doomed by the basic incompatibility of their talents. Ziegler does convey a vivid sense of what made Olivier the most famous stage actor of the 20th century: He simply worked harder than anyone else and invested his roles with a physical bravura that made him thrilling to watch. The biography is notable for a substantive account of Olivier’s tenure as director of England’s National Theatre, during which he helped establish a fledgling organization with his charm and charisma while also displaying the well-known competitiveness that kept such acting peers as Gielgud and Richardson off the National’s roster. Nonetheless, as Ziegler notes, the National owed its existence to Olivier’s “passionate exuberance [and] dynamic energy”; he deserved better than the poorly managed transition to Peter Hall’s leadership in 1973. Olivier’s final years were marked by a series of debilitating illnesses that left him unable to work onstage, a painful fate for an actor who regarded film and TV as second choices. His formerly happy third marriage to Joan Plowright suffered in this period as well; once he could no longer act, he was a querulous old man waiting to die.
Despite a lack of revelations, this is probably the best Olivier book for general readers.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62365-042-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: MacLehose/Quercus
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
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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
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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
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