An extraordinary remembrance that’s both gut-wrenching and inspiring.
A writer recollects an astonishingly dysfunctional childhood under the violent, criminal tyranny of his father.
According to debut author Crow, his father, Thurston, was as intelligent as he was dangerous—apparently the bearer of an uncommonly high IQ, he was also alarmingly volatile. Thurston spent time in prison for nearly beating a man to death and often bragged about other murders he committed or planned to perpetrate. He was also an unrepentant thief who recruited the author to be his accomplice in crime. When Crow was not yet 4 years old, Thurston confided in him that he would soon get rid of Thelma Lou, the author’s mother. Thurston finally forced Crow to orchestrate their abandonment of her. Thelma Lou was mentally disturbed, and her combination of incompetence and motherly negligence consistently endangered her children. The author idolized his father, nevertheless, and pined to become “smart and strong and brave” just like Thurston, sometimes perversely winning his praise for ungovernable mischievousness. Crow struggled at school—he was diagnosed with dyslexia—but still managed to graduate from college and eventually win a position with the U.S. Department of Agriculture administration. But Thurston’s madness continued to haunt the author—his father tried to pull Crow’s sister, Sally, into a conspiracy to commit a crime. The author finally felt the need to stop his father and found the courage to try. Crow’s memoir is cinematically gripping—the depth of Thurston’s sociopathic depravity is as riveting as it is repulsive. The author deftly relates that his father conceived the conspiracy with cunning cynicism: “Dad’s logic was simple: He knew that if he involved Sally…she would ask for my help, even when she swore to keep silent. And he knew that I wouldn’t let anything happen to Sally.” Crow writes with confessional frankness and affectingly depicts a childhood lost to emotional and physical abuse. He also thoughtfully captures life on a Native American reservation—Crow partially grew up on a Navajo one.
An extraordinary remembrance that’s both gut-wrenching and inspiring.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9974871-7-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sandra Jonas Publishing House
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving and intimate epistolary record of the complex relationship between the great Russian playwright and the actress who eventually became his wife. Chekhov (18601904) already had an advanced case of tuberculosis when he met Knipper (18681959) in the fall of 1898. She was rehearsing the role of Arkadina in his revised version of The Seagull for the newly formed Moscow Art Theatre; the production's success—and her personal triumph in it—meant that she spent the theater season in Moscow while he, under doctor's orders, spent the long Russian winter in the warmer climate of Yalta. These separations, which continued after their marriage in 1901, made letters their primary form of communication for months at a time. The couple's very different personalities stand in sharp relief: Knipper's lively epistles, which feature evocative descriptions of the Russian landscape and some astute analysis of her lover's personality, reveal an affectionate, frank, impulsive woman who wrote what she thought and frequently expressed frustration with Chekhov's elusiveness. The playwright's missives are witty, charming, and infuriatingly oblique about his feelings, although his post-wedding correspondence is noticeably warmer. Benedetti (Stanislavski, 1988) has edited the letters to focus on the pair's personal relationship; frequent ellipses suggest that a good deal of information about Moscow Art Theatre rehearsals and internal politics has been omitted, possibly to avoid overlap with The Moscow Art Theatre Letters, which he also edited. Interesting though the couple's emotional ups and downs are, more material on their shared professional life—he wrote Masha in Three Sisters and Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard for her—would have made this even better. Nonetheless, this correspondence gives us wonderfully vivid self-portraits of two important Russian artists and a poignant chronicle of love struggling against the handicap of distance and the ravages of terminal illness.
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1997
ISBN: 0-88001-550-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
A humorous take on chronic low back pain, light enough to be held in one hand by anyone lying in traction or otherwise immobilized on a bed of pain. Spengler, a German historian and sinologist and author of the novel Lenin's Brain (1993), has produced 24 gentle essays on the disconcerting, embarrassing, funny, and painful business of living with a bad back. He traces the origins of his own problem to his brief career as an army pallbearer and the arduous rehearsals required for ``Operation Adenauer''—carrying water-filled radiators in preparation for a heavy state coffin. While state funerals might not seem the stuff of humor, Spengler proves otherwise. Back-straining romantic interludes, psychotherapy sessions (``Book and back, that's interesting,'' the therapist notes. ``They even sound alike, and both have a spine.''), mountain climbing, lunch with a film producer, an encounter with a rigorous healer whose technique combined his own manipulations with his mother's prayers, a visit with a Chinese patriarch requiring performance of innumerable full-body kowtows—all are fodder for the brain of the erudite, literate, and well-traveled Spengler, who tells story after self-deprecating little story with style and wit. Especially vivid is his description of traveling to Texas to meet his American translator and being taken out for barbecue and introduced to hot sauce and some high-stepping line dancing, the latter of which had remarkable, if temporary, pain-killing effects. While it is by no means necessary to have suffered from back pain to enjoy Spengler's delightful essays, this would be the perfect gift for anyone who ever has.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8050-5552-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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