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MISS MCKIRDY'S DAUGHTERS WILL NOW DANCE THE HIGHLAND FLING

The evocative autobiography of an actress born and bred in Johannesburg, whose mother found fulfillment in teaching her daughters—and other daughters of South Africa—the traditional dances of Scotland. As the book begins, ``Miss McKirdy lives with her three daughters . . . in a dutch-gabled house on the outskirts of Johannesburg.'' Miss McKirdy had declined to take her husband's name, but was married to a fellow Scot who had immigrated to South Africa. Daddy was a drunk, and Mummy coped by training her daughters and others' to be champions of Highland dance and by teaching elocution at a Roman Catholic convent school. Author Kinghorn was the youngest of the dancing daughters, preceded by Jilly, nicknamed China because of her china-doll complexion, and Annie, born on a Sabbath ``bonny and bright and good and gay.'' As Barbara tells the tale, she was neither the prettiest nor the most appealing dancer, but like her mother, she was a survivor, winning the South African dance championship, marrying, and moving to England, where for a period she worked with her husband as a couple in service, cleaning bathrooms and furtively picking flowers from the master's garden. Barbara goes on to become a successful actress, but she loses her family, and her country, in one tragedy after another. Annie simply disappears from a mental hospital, although Barbara tries to track her through a series of psychics, and Jilly dies of a cancer for which her Christian Science religion offered no palliative. Daddy dies when the last of his secret supply of drink is gone, and Mummy/Miss McKirdy dies of old age. Replete with compelling detail, this is a story of the magnetism of South Africa, of a troubled but tightly knit family, and of a woman who graduated from self-absorption to self- awareness in the swirling world of the theater.

Pub Date: April 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-312-14016-9

Page Count: 336

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996

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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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