Not, of course, contrary to the publisher's blurb, the first ``in-depth biography''—Cole Lesley's 1976 Life of Noel Coward was discreet yet complete—but a decent enough life-and-work: sometimes strong on the plays and films, weak (to put it mildly) on the songs. Fisher, a British film critic, stresses—not very originally- -the contradictions in Coward's persona and oeuvre: the mocking outsider (homosexual, lower-middle-class) who was also a social climber, snob, and patriotic champion (in later years) of the Establishment; the idol of the literati who was himself ill- educated, insecure, and anti-intellectual. These conflicting impulses are noted as Fisher competently chronicles the well-known career—from child-performer to 1920's stardom in revues and his own scandalous The Vortex; from theater triumphs (Hay Fever, Private Lives, Calvacade, Blithe Spirit) and film acclaim (Brief Encounter, In Which We Serve) to a post-WW II decline partly redeemed by phenomenal success as a cabaret act. Only half- convincingly, Fisher argues that Coward, longing for acceptance, remained creatively stunted; the later work is slighted, and the memorable music and lyrics receive little attention. As for the private life, a few lovers (including Prince George, youngest son of George V) are named; the supposed Coward/Olivier liaison (cf. Donald Spoto, Laurence Olivier, p. 42) doesn't surface; and nothing surprising—or particularly insightful—is revealed. Throughout, the tone wavers between crisp competence and somewhat glib snideness, with unnecessary bits of dubious opinion tossed in (``Samuel Beckett is one of the most overrated playwrights of recent times...''). A mixed bag, then, marred by blind spots—but welcome for its detailed discussion of the plays and on-target enough of the time to be useful, perhaps, as a balance to Lesley's far less critical biography. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: June 17, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-07044-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
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