A large bag of buttery popcorn that goes down oh so pleasantly.
A veteran entertainment journalist offers a breezy, detailed rehearsal of three successful romantic comedies from the 1980s and ’90s.
Carlson—who has written for the Hollywood Reporter and the Associated Press—dug deeply and interviewed widely to inform this guilty-pleasure romp through the histories of When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You’ve Got Mail (1998). For each film, the author discusses the writing, actors, crew, shooting, editing and post-production, release, and response. As the subtitle reveals, Nora Ephron, who died in 2012, is the focus, and although Carlson is generally admiring, she doesn’t hesitate to zing her occasionally about her troubles with cast and crew—including a child she cut from Sleepless and a disagreement with a celebrated cinematographer. Still, the author’s approach remains steadfastly pro-Ephron. Carlson weaves other stories throughout—e.g., the careers of actors Meg Ryan (who emerged as a star in these films), Tom Hanks, and Ephron’s sister and co-writer, Delia. We also learn that the woman who spoke the title words in When Harry Met Sally was Ephron’s mother, and we find out details about the man who actually said, “You’ve got mail” (and other things) on AOL. The author informs us about the personal lives of her principals, noting sadly, for example, how Ryan, America’s sweetheart, became involved in an extramarital affair with Russell Crowe and became “Hester Prynne overnight.” The text is suffused with dialogue—some from the films themselves—a technique that helps readers consume all the more quickly this long buffet line of snack food. On a more serious note, Carlson continually reminds readers of the difficulties women face in Hollywood as both directors and as performers whose aging often slows and then terminates their careers.
A large bag of buttery popcorn that goes down oh so pleasantly.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-35388-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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