A stirring life story recounted in straightforward, serviceable prose.
Biography of the disabled Irish artist and author whose life story inspired the Oscar-winning film My Left Foot.
The film was 13 years old and its subject long dead in 2003, when a chatty Dublin taxi driver first tipped off University College undergrad Hambleton about Christy Brown (1932–81). She began reading his poetry, memoirs and sole novel. Amazed that there had been no scholarly investigation of this extraordinarily accomplished work, she chose Brown as the subject of her masters thesis and then decided to write his biography. Here she dives into his family history, dreams, successes and tribulations. She dexterously recounts the genesis of his illness—double athetoid cerebral palsy caused by partial suffocation at birth, which left his entire body paralyzed save for his left foot. Mute until the age of 17, Brown had no formal schooling and instead garnered bits of knowledge from his many siblings. Determined to see him succeed, his mother tirelessly taught her son two invaluable lessons: how to grasp chalk and brushes with his foot to write letters and paint, and how to use body language and grunts to communicate. As Brown matured, the desire for “an ordinary life” and to be loved by a woman became paramount, as did affinities for classical music (a reliable remedy for his depressions) and travel. His autobiography, My Left Foot, was published in 1954 to great acclaim that somewhat tempered the tragedy of his father’s death the following year. Heavy drinking, hubris, recurring ailments and his mother’s death in 1968 all played a role in his complex, erratic artistic growth. Brown’s 1970 novel, Down All the Days, was an international bestseller, and he went on to marry a nurse. Making use of heretofore unpublished letters and poems, as well as personal interviews with friends and family, the author sheds new insights into what drove Brown’s creativity. Private photos of family and friends and color reproductions of Brown’s paintings add an intimate note to the narrative.
A stirring life story recounted in straightforward, serviceable prose.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84596-280-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Mainstream/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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