A colorful though repetitious memoir of life in a small Lebanese village just after the Second World War. Accawi’s first book is a lament for the lost world of his youth—for the sights, smells, sounds, and rituals of Magdaluna (“the tower of the moon”), a tiny village that now exists only in memory. To connect these reminiscences, Accawi compares himself, for reasons that are not immediately clear, to a pyramid builder, whose “stones” are the ideas, events, people, pets, and, most curiously, the small appliances which have shaped his life. The Magdalunians emerge here as an entertaining if feckless bunch who tend their goat herds and olive groves, marry their cousins, and generally live their lives with little contact with the outside world. When the modern world begins to intrude, traditions that have lasted for centuries—everything from baking bread to gathering at the village spring to dancing the Dabki—quickly disappear. Accawi’s stories, told from a child’s perspective, are peopled with memorable characters such as Teta, his one-eyed Presbyterian grandmother, and Abu George, the virile village blacksmith who stands on his roof and bellows the latest news in a voice that can be heard for miles around. Yet this is a book in which small appliances loom very large. The author devotes entire chapters to the coming of the radio, the gramophone, and the telephone, among others, blaming each in its turn for the village’s downfall, before melodramatically pointing his finger at the automobile, specifically “a shiny black DeSoto standing like a dark, massive monument upon what looks to me like the tomb of the world.” Strangely, the fact that Magdaluna was actually leveled by Muslim fighters during the Lebanese civil war is mentioned almost as an afterthought. Taken individually, these stories can transport the reader to another world (—The Telephone” was included in The Best American Essays 1998). Taken together, they sound so much alike that the exotic finally becomes mundane.
Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-8070-7008-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
An eye-opening glimpse into the attempted self-unmaking of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.
The debut memoir from the pop and fashion star.
Early on, Simpson describes the book she didn’t write: “a motivational manual telling you how to live your best life.” Though having committed to the lucrative deal years before, she “walked away,” fearing any sort of self-help advice she might give would be hypocritical. Outwardly, Simpson was at the peak of her success, with her fashion line generating “one billion dollars in annual sales.” However, anxiety was getting the better of her, and she admits she’d become a “feelings addict,” just needing “enough noise to distract me from the pain I’d been avoiding since childhood. The demons of traumatic abuse that refused to let me sleep at night—Tylenol PM at age twelve, red wine and Ambien as a grown, scared woman. Those same demons who perched on my shoulder, and when they saw a man as dark as them, leaned in to my ear to whisper, ‘Just give him your light. See if it saves him…’ ” On Halloween 2017, Simpson hit rock bottom, and, with the intervention of her devoted friends and husband, began to address her addictions and underlying fears. In this readable but overlong narrative, the author traces her childhood as a Baptist preacher’s daughter moving 18 times before she “hit fifth grade,” and follows her remarkable rise to fame as a singer. She reveals the psychological trauma resulting from years of sexual abuse by a family friend, experiences that drew her repeatedly into bad relationships with men, most publicly with ex-husband Nick Lachey. Admitting that she was attracted to the validating power of an audience, Simpson analyzes how her failings and triumphs have enabled her to take control of her life, even as she was hounded by the press and various music and movie executives about her weight. Simpson’s memoir contains plenty of personal and professional moments for fans to savor. One of Kirkus and Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2020.
An eye-opening glimpse into the attempted self-unmaking of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-289996-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
An inspiringly intense memoir for readers of adventure lit.
A much-honored climber’s exciting story of the death-defying feats that led to rock-climbing superstardom.
Honnold showed a predilection for climbing when he was still a small child. At age 5, he managed to scramble 30 feet off the ground at a climbing gym within just a few minutes. Later, he entered climbing competitions all over his home state of California. After his father died, Honnold dropped out of college and chose to live out of his mother’s minivan while climbing mountains. This book—which alternates between narratives by Honnold and writer/climber Roberts (Lost World of the Old Ones: Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest, 2015, etc.)—focuses on that remarkable and unconventional life and how Honnold, a quiet man who climbed purely for the joy of adventure, became “the most famous climber in the world” in the span of seven years. In his early days as a vagabond climber, he learned how to free solo, a form of climbing that relies on strength and skill alone. Not long after that, Honnold began attempting climbs—such as Half Dome in Yosemite and Sendero Luminoso in Mexico—that veterans of the sport believed were too difficult to do without gear or a partner. His notoriety spread quickly among rock climbers. Rapidly, Honnold became the subject of several documentaries and was receiving sponsorships that allowed him to travel the world and push the boundaries of his sport to extreme new heights. His dedication to the sport of rock climbing had its costs, however, including the painful end of a long-term relationship. Yet celebrity status also reinforced his belief in the importance of living simply. In 2012, he established the Honnold Foundation, which sought “sustainable ways to improve lives worldwide.” The humility, pioneering spirit, and courage that are the author’s personal hallmarks are both refreshing and invigorating. His account ultimately reminds readers how genuine fulfillment comes only when engaging in life fully and without fear.
An inspiringly intense memoir for readers of adventure lit.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-393-24762-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
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