by Elinor Lipman ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2013
A feast of bite-sized morsels of humor and wisdom.
Accomplished novelist Lipman (Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus, 2012, etc.) exposes her journalistic roots by collecting over 30 “(all too) personal” essays and columns that have appeared in a number of periodicals.
Dating back about 20 years, these mostly light pieces examine her family’s foibles, the craft and business of writing, romance, and, somewhat surprisingly, given the rest of the volume’s rather acerbic tone, moving reflections on her husband’s tragic illness and the author’s life after his death. In each piece, no matter how brief, Lipman tackles the subject at hand with Dorothy Parker–esque wit and verve. The author’s good-spirited openness and self-awareness shine through in pieces on her childhood (she happily dishes about her mother’s condiment-phobia), her willingness to hold grudges and the stages of her son’s development. She also describes the peaks and valleys of decades living with a kind man whose tastes and “midlife fastidiousness,” especially when it came to dress and household clutter, sometimes got the better of her. Particularly keen are Lipman’s observations on writing, covering topics ranging from the naming of characters—“Nomenclature done right contributes to characterization”—to the authorial use of food as a “narrative helpmate” and a frank rumination on the politics of blurbing. Confessing her proclivity to promote the work of others, Lipman explains, “I am giving back. Critics have been described as people who go into the street after battle and shoot the wounded. No blurb can be a bulletproof vest, but in my own experience it can put a square inch of Kevlar over a worried writer’s heart.”
A feast of bite-sized morsels of humor and wisdom.Pub Date: April 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-0547576206
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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