A rare, vivid perspective on the impact of war.
Letters from a young Londoner to her lover offer an intimate chronicle of life on the homefront.
In 2017, McGowan purchased a large cache of letters written by Eileen Alexander (1917-1986), from 1939 to 1947, to Gershon Ellenbogen, her boyfriend, fiance, and, in 1944, husband. Deftly edited by McGowan and with informative chapter introductions by Crane, the letters offer a moving, sharply etched chronicle of wartime London, where Eileen lived with her family, joined the war effort, and eagerly awaited Gershon’s return from a post in Egypt. As Alexander herself noted, she was a lively, engaging correspondent: “letter-writing is undoubtedly my medium,” she wrote to Gershon; “when I’m writing (and particularly when I’m writing to you, my dear love) I have the feeling that I’m living my experiences all over again—but living them more richly, because they’re being shared with a friend.” Alexander’s wit and intelligence shine through reports of her work, their friends’ romantic entanglements, her reflections on religion, her sexual longing, and tidbits of gossip, some related to their mutual friend Aubrey Eban, who later became, as Abba Eban, the internationally renowned “Voice of Israel.” Awarded a first in English at Cambridge, Alexander laces her letters with literary references, and though nightly bombings often required sleeping in shelters, she and her friends were able to dine out, gather in one another’s houses, and attend the theater and movies, excursions that she recounted in detail to Gershon. The war certainly took its toll, psychologically and emotionally, but Alexander assured Gershon, “I’m a Girl of Simple Needs. The only things I must have are you,” friends, books, and “constant Hot Water.” As “depressing and exhausting” as the war was, Alexander wrote, “if I were asked to choose between death and a shameful peace—I would choose death,” she wrote. “The only price I couldn’t pay would be your life.”
A rare, vivid perspective on the impact of war.Pub Date: May 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-288880-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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