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DIVING FOR STARFISH

THE JEWELER, THE ACTRESS, THE HEIRESS, AND ONE OF THE WORLD'S MOST ALLURING PIECES OF JEWELRY

Quick, fun, easy reading for devotees of high fashion and mystery fans, complete with wrong turns and false friends.

The tale of “one of the most captivating and enduring pieces of jewelry,” which would “crawl into the world of collectors and jewelers to enchant and confound them” for more than eight decades.

When Burns wrote a biography of Millicent Rogers (Searching for Beauty, 2011, etc.), she was especially intrigued by one particular item in her subject’s jewelry collection: a hand-sized starfish that featured “71 cabochon rubies and 241 small amethysts.” Certainly expensive, it was more valuable for its rarity and perfection. Only three were originally made in the 1930s and perhaps two more later. The mystery begins with an exclusive jeweler in Paris, Boivin. There, Juliette Moutard had solid relationships with a variety of designers and workshops that met the demand for beautiful and well-designed pieces. They were so special that they were never signed; the jeweler knew that the pieces’ quality would prove their origin. Burns knew that Rogers had one of the starfish and held it for more than 70 years. Another was said to have been purchased by Claudette Colbert, a movie star well known for her magnificent jewels. Supposedly, she lost hers. As she searched for clues to the location of the starfish, the author discovered the very private world of jewelry sales. It is a business that pays little attention to provenance, unless a famous person, like Elizabeth Taylor, owned a particular piece. Equally tight lipped are the exclusive jewelers—e.g., Siegelson and Verdura—and brokers who are approached with pieces when owners suffer a death, bankruptcy, or divorce and must sell. Getting information from top jewelers is a challenge at best. As the author notes, there are other starfish, some with emeralds and sapphires, but the three originals are the subject of a long and frustrating search.

Quick, fun, easy reading for devotees of high fashion and mystery fans, complete with wrong turns and false friends.

Pub Date: March 20, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-250-05620-7

Page Count: 240

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017

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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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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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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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