Fibber and Molly are long gone, but Jack Sweeney remains the romantic, young Naval officer forever.
The letters reprinted here from the author’s father to her mother were written in 1946, so the subtitle promising “a wartime love story” is a bit of a stretch. Nonetheless, it was and still is a love story.
World War II ended just a few months before handsome, clever Navy pilot Jack Sweeney met pretty, charming Beebe Mathewson. After a rapturous fortnight-long courtship, he was shipped to the Pacific, where he wrote letter upon letter, sometimes slight, always sincere. Emma Sweeney, who was born after her father’s plane disappeared south of Bermuda in 1956, found the missives (tied with a faded pink ribbon) following her mother’s death in 1985. That discovery was an emotional revelation, profoundly meaningful to her—and those who like to read other people’s mail will also get a particular frisson from them. Others may find the correspondence a mildly interesting time capsule from nearly 60 years past. In the nifty argot of the period, Jack writes to his “honeybunch,” his “honeybunny boo,” and signs off with “SWAK.” He is “batty” about Beebe. She’s “the bee’s knees,” no less, and he wonders if her boss is “a wolf.” Apparently she’s not as amused by radio’s Fibber McGee and Molly as he is, but they agree on the music of Perry Como. He describes movies and card games and includes little rebus sketches and cartoons. He writes truly funny things, discusses his “sox” (careful with his penmanship so it doesn’t look like “sex”) and expresses concern that his girl may be putting on weight. (When she doesn’t think that’s so funny, he apologizes: “all I wanted was to be sure I could still put my arms all the way around you.”) The motif throughout is Jack’s passion. He is besotted with love, and within days of his return, they are married. In ten years, they have four sons. Then, still a Navy pilot, he apparently crashes somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. He never saw his daughter, who meets him best through these love letters.
Fibber and Molly are long gone, but Jack Sweeney remains the romantic, young Naval officer forever.Pub Date: April 10, 2002
ISBN: 0-316-75858-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2002
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.
Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.
At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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