This sprawling narrative of Paul Gauguin's messy life provides new insights, despite its lack of formal coherence. Sweetman (Mary Renault, 1993; Van Gogh, 1990) names the three sections of his book after the three questions posed by a late Gauguin masterpiece's title: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Gauguin's origins make for a fascinating story. His mother, born into French feminist and radical circles, was for a time cared for by George Sand. Family connections led Gauguin's parents to emigrate to Peru; his father didn't survive the trip. Gauguin soon returned to France with his mother; Sweetman shows how the Peruvian experience would nevertheless inform the artist's aesthetic sensibility. Gauguin came late to painting as a career. He worked as a sailor before making, and then losing, a great deal of money in investment banking. The latter enterprise, provided Gauguin with an entrÇe to the Impressionist circles where he would serve his apprenticeship; Pissarro, in particular, became a mentor. Sweetman exhaustively details Gauguin's associations with CÇzanne, MallarmÇ, Seurat, and Van Gogh. Gauguin's Danish wife, from whom he became estranged, and his many mistresses also find illumination. Sweetman explores at length the degraded physical condition, confused philosophizing, and glorious artistic productions that characterized Gauguin's visionary last years in the South Pacific. The significance of the expatriate's work remained in dispute until the results of his famous late-life relocation to Tahiti were exhibited in France. Sweetman suggests, in his last section, that the ``we'' whom Gauguin invoked in his painting's title includes us. We follow Gauguin in our ambivalence toward the modern vices- -money worship, misogyny, and colonialism. If Gauguin did not succeed in getting beyond these vices, neither have we, Sweetman suggests. And if Sweetman doesn't entirely succeed in maintaining his narrative focus, he does provide a biography that brings our own time into clearer view along with that of his subject. (color and b&w illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-80941-9
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
At-times inspirational memoir about a journalist’s battle with a grave disease she had to face while also dealing with her...
With the assistance of Chambers (co-author; Yes, Chef, 2012, etc.), broadcaster Roberts (From the Heart: Eight Rules to Live By, 2008) chronicles her struggles with myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare condition that affects blood and bone marrow.
The author is a well-known newscaster, formerly on SportsCenter and now one of the anchors of Good Morning America. In 2007, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she successfully fought with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Five years later, after returning from her news assignment covering the 2012 Academy Awards, she learned that chemotherapy had resulted in her developing MDS, which led to an acute form of leukemia. Without a bone marrow transplant, her projected life expectancy was two years. While Roberts searched for a compatible donor and prepared for the transplant, her aging mother’s health also began to gravely deteriorate. Roberts faced her misfortune with an athlete’s mentality, showing strength against both her disease and the loss of her mother. This is reflected in her narration, which rarely veers toward melodrama or self-pity. Even in the chapters describing the transplantion process and its immediate aftermath, which make for the most intimate parts of the book, Roberts maintains her positivity. However, despite the author’s best efforts to communicate the challenges of her experience and inspire empathy, readers are constantly reminded of her celebrity status and, as a result, are always kept at arm's length. The sections involving Roberts’ family partly counter this problem, since it is in these scenes that she becomes any daughter, any sister, any lover, struggling with a life-threatening disease. “[I]f there’s one thing that spending a year fighting for your life against a rare and insidious…disease will teach you,” she writes, “it’s that time is not to be wasted.”
At-times inspirational memoir about a journalist’s battle with a grave disease she had to face while also dealing with her mother’s passing.Pub Date: April 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4555-7845-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.
Full-immersion journalist Kidder (Home Town, 1999, etc.) tries valiantly to keep up with a front-line, muddy-and-bloody general in the war against infectious disease in Haiti and elsewhere.
The author occasionally confesses to weariness in this gripping account—and why not? Paul Farmer, who has an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Harvard, appears to be almost preternaturally intelligent, productive, energetic, and devoted to his causes. So trotting alongside him up Haitian hills, through international airports and Siberian prisons and Cuban clinics, may be beyond the capacity of a mere mortal. Kidder begins with a swift account of his first meeting with Farmer in Haiti while working on a story about American soldiers, then describes his initial visit to the doctor’s clinic, where the journalist felt he’d “encountered a miracle.” Employing guile, grit, grins, and gifts from generous donors (especially Boston contractor Tom White), Farmer has created an oasis in Haiti where TB and AIDS meet their Waterloos. The doctor has an astonishing rapport with his patients and often travels by foot for hours over difficult terrain to treat them in their dwellings (“houses” would be far too grand a word). Kidder pauses to fill in Farmer’s amazing biography: his childhood in an eccentric family sounds like something from The Mosquito Coast; a love affair with Roald Dahl’s daughter ended amicably; his marriage to a Haitian anthropologist produced a daughter whom he sees infrequently thanks to his frenetic schedule. While studying at Duke and Harvard, Kidder writes, Farmer became obsessed with public health issues; even before he’d finished his degrees he was spending much of his time in Haiti establishing the clinic that would give him both immense personal satisfaction and unsurpassed credibility in the medical worlds he hopes to influence.
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50616-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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