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I REACH FOR THE STARS

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Dame Barbara Cartland's 600th book. At 93, there's life in the old dame yet. It's probably more profitable to think of Cartland's newest memoir (see We Danced All Night, below) as fictionÖ la Auntie Mamerather than ``serious'' autobiography, although this is social history as told nowhere else. Or maybe a short chat with Cartland herselfarranged on a sofa in her signature pink (which she adopted after a trip to Egypt), crowned by platinum hair dressed daily (her one luxury), and holding her Pekingeseas she regales us with anecdotes about everything from her second husband's grisly WW I wounds to a promotion by Dewhursts, the British butchers, for a free Barbara Cartland romance novel with ú10 worth of meat. (How, she wonders, could we possibly ``explain that meat was part of romance''?) Dutifully, she gives a bit of her early history (Cartland married her first husband after 49 proposals, her second after 55), preaches about the goodness of health nostrums, and drops a load of famous names. (According to Cartland, Buddy Greco is the most famous singer/pianist in the US.) There are rehashes of old royal news and remembrances of famous old friends. She and ``Dickie'' Mountbatten were collaborating on a romance novel just a few weeks before his assassination. It's a superficial ramble, with sharp peeks at Cartland's active mind, strong spirit, and deeply reflexive talent for self-promotion, ending with her usual spiritual crescendo: True love is the closest glimpse we have of God, who must already be reserving a pink cloud and a diamond- studded halo for Barbara. A dotty, desultory audience with one of the 20th century's great originals. (b&w photos)

Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1995

ISBN: 0-86051-924-4

Page Count: 197

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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