Up-and-down, humorous and/or serious essays that run through the gauntlet that comprises life.
The bestselling author of How to Be a Woman (2012) compiles columns on all aspects of life into one giant explosion of thoughts.
Quirky, funny, stupid, serious, compassionate, and thoughtful are just some of the adjectives necessary to describe Moran’s (How to Build a Girl, 2014, etc.) British-centric compilation of essays on just about anything that has happened to her. Want to know her thoughts on cystitis, printers, the 5:2 diet (“wherein the dieter eats perfectly normally for five days of the week—then spends the remaining two days on a very restrictive diet”), the song “Get Lucky,” seven things about fashion every woman should know, or Lena Dunham and Girls? Look no further. Interested in Moran’s take on Margaret Thatcher’s death, bus tour guides, how she learned about sex, or her love for David Bowie? That’s here as well. Fortunately, the author does delve into more than these fluff pieces, addressing tough issues like rape, female genital mutilation, what it means to be a feminist, the body issues women face, immigration, war, terrorism, and the problems with social media, including the ease with which people can harass others online. The tone is satirical, humorous, serious, or snarky, depending on the topic. Some of the commentaries include locker-room humor, which sits awkwardly next to the more significant discussions of important issues. In attempting to address everything and find a common theme, “the same old problems and the same old asshats,” Moran has created a mishmash that leaves readers laughing one minute and begging for more seriousness the next. Her observations on somber topics are the highlights, giving readers a better sense of the compassionate, intelligent woman behind the prose.
Up-and-down, humorous and/or serious essays that run through the gauntlet that comprises life.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-243375-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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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