by Franny Moyle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 15, 2012
Juicy literary history. The Wildes’ stories would have silenced the Prince in Romeo and Juliet, who said there “never was a...
The little-known Constance Lloyd Wilde had some years of surpassing happiness with her gifted, controversial husband before scandal overwhelmed everything.
Former BBC arts producer Moyle (Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites, 2009) has a difficult task: keeping the focus on Constance when Oscar’s flamboyance, fame and flameout are so riveting. Mostly, she succeeds. The author begins in 1895 at a moment of great success and crisis: Oscar had two hits in the West End, but the scandal of his homosexuality was erupting, which would send him to prison for two years, destroy his reputation and career, and send his wife and two sons into exile to the continent, where they changed their surnames to Holland. After this emotional “teaser” of an opening, Moyle returns to tell the stories of her principals. Constance, whose wealthy father died when she was still a teen, suffered from her mother’s verbal and physical abuse. Nonetheless, she emerged as a bright, attractive, talented young woman whom Oscar met via her brother. Oscar, Moyle reminds us, had already lost one young woman—to Bram Stoker. Moyle carefully charts their courtship, marriage and parenthood. Initially, the Wildes were popular in society and helped each other in their work. Oscar was practicing journalism and writing poetry; Constance was involved in various women’s causes and wrote stories and essays. All looked well. Then…Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas. Oscar’s sexual passion for him consumed them all. Moyle shows us a bright, trusting woman who remained devoted even in some of the darkest hours.
Juicy literary history. The Wildes’ stories would have silenced the Prince in Romeo and Juliet, who said there “never was a story of more woe.”Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60598-381-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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BOOK REVIEW
by Franny Moyle
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
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
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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