An exquisite but bittersweet madeleine of a memoir, sublime in the tasting but ultimately unsatisfying.
The legendary Deneuve, between takes.
The French icon’s film diaries project the very qualities that made their author an international figure of fascination: They are elegant, suffused with sensual beauty and intriguingly remote. The actress proves an impressive writer, waxing lyrically on her time in Vietnam filming the acclaimed Indochine, describing the exotic landscapes, energetic people and the oppressive heat with the observational acumen of a born novelist. Deneuve is surprisingly engaged in the technical process of filmmaking, keenly aware of the myriad variables that contribute to the success or failure of a scene, and she is not shy about making suggestions to her directors. She is particularly good on the subject of directors: very sympathetic to Roman Polanski, admiring of Régis Wargnier and riveting on the idiosyncrasies of surrealist director Luis Buñuel (whose Belle de Jour made Deneuve a world-wide star), her observations affectionate and full of fascinating insights into his work habits. The consistency of Deneuve’s tone is remarkable; the earliest diaries included date from the production of the 1968 romantic comedy The April Fools, and the 25-year-old Deneuve’s perspicacity is in full flower. But while she is amusingly critical (she reveals a low opinion of America) and tetchy (she hates air conditioning and frequently complains of sleepiness and sore throats), there is something fundamentally reserved about Deneuve that chafes a bit: This ravishing, talented woman bore the children of Marcello Mastroianni and Roger Vadim, was a critical part of more than a few shocking, boundary-bursting films, and she survived Lars von Trier and Björk—but the emotional tone of her record remains cool and measured, excluding the passionate messiness that must have marked such a life. Whether this indicates dignity or an ungenerous reticence is the reader’s call. Also disappointing is the relatively small pool of films reflected in the collection—her recollections of the filming of such classics as Belle de Jour, Repulsion and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg are sorely missed.
An exquisite but bittersweet madeleine of a memoir, sublime in the tasting but ultimately unsatisfying.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-933648-36-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2007
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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