The author provides a host of intriguing insights into a misunderstood woman. Those who have read other accounts will want...
Pasternak (Lara: The Untold Love Story and Inspiration for Dr. Zhivago, 2017, etc.) seeks to “strip away decades of grotesque caricature” about Wallis Simpson (1896-1986).
The author offers a variety of thought-provoking arguments to counter the accepted wisdom about Simpson. Condemned as the woman who stole the king, Simpson’s biggest mistake was latching onto Prince Edward’s star; his own father said he was unsuited to be king, a sentiment echoed by others in positions of power. Regarding his kingly duties, he was faithful; he truly felt sorrow for his people as they suffered through rampant unemployment and perpetual hunger. The people loved him, but the establishment did not. Stanley Baldwin, holding all the cards as prime minister, played a sinister part in rejecting all attempts by Edward to retain his throne. He utterly rejected the possibility of a Morganatic marriage in which Simpson would have been titled but never become queen and any offspring could not inherit—though the last was irrelevant as neither party was capable of producing an heir. Edward was besotted with Simpson and called her many times a day and whined when she wasn’t with him; he was consistently needy and constantly sought the attention denied him by both his parents. He was a Jazz Age man, given to drinking, dancing, and generally latching onto other men’s wives. The author clearly shows how his love of American ways and cafe society turned most aristocrats against him. He was not bright, and when the couple showed an interest in fascism, it was only because it was the chic thing to do; he was too vacuous to take to any political creed. For all that was said about Simpson, Pasternak’s most illuminating point is that she knew how to soothe him and helped him understand the necessity of his duties; unfortunately, she was unable to curb his obsession with her.
The author provides a host of intriguing insights into a misunderstood woman. Those who have read other accounts will want to look at this other side.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9844-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
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
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
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