A lovely and sometimes lyrical work of imagination that rests on a solid foundation of scholarship. (8 pages b&w photos)
A skillful, imaginative exploration of the life of a 19th-century French stonemason who, with ferocious determination, transformed himself into a potent political force.
Tindall (Célestine, 1996, etc.) begins this remarkable work on a spring morning in rural central France in 1830. Fourteen-year-old Martin Nadaud is leaving his home to accompany his father and uncle and, eventually, thousands of other masons who walk north to Paris each spring (“like migrant birds”) to work until fall. The author evokes an itinerant way of life now largely forgotten (though not gone. (As she points out, other cultures continue sending their men into the cities to establish themselves.) Tindall scoured archives and public records for the few facts they held and acknowledges that she felt at times as if she were assembling a jigsaw puzzle with many pieces missing; she worried that even “some of those that survive may not actually belong.” Using these slim records, she constructs a sturdy framework for Nadaud’s life. Martin’s father had insisted the boy learn to read (a rare skill in his day), and the young man helped pay off family debts by contributing not only his laborer’s wages but also the money he earned teaching other laborers to read in an informal night school he operated. In Paris, Martin met politicians interested in workers’ rights and, after one failure, he was elected to parliament in 1849. The rise of Louis-Napoleon, however, led to Martin’s 1851 arrest and 1852 exile. He ended up in England, where (after working once again as a mason) he began a 12-year career teaching French at a boys’ school in Wimbledon. In a “triumphant reversal of fortune,” he returned to France and became an important public official in his native Creuse.
A lovely and sometimes lyrical work of imagination that rests on a solid foundation of scholarship. (8 pages b&w photos)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-26185-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a...
An inspired, beautiful and absorbing account of a woman battling grief—with a goshawk.
Following the sudden death of her father, Macdonald (History and Philosophy/Cambridge Univ.; Falcon, 2006, etc.) tried staving off deep depression with a unique form of personal therapy: the purchase and training of an English goshawk, which she named Mabel. Although a trained falconer, the author chose a raptor both unfamiliar and unpredictable, a creature of mad confidence that became a means of working against madness. “The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life,” she writes. As a devotee of birds of prey since girlhood, Macdonald knew the legends and the literature, particularly the cautionary example of The Once and Future King author T.H. White, whose 1951 book The Goshawk details his own painful battle to master his title subject. Macdonald dramatically parallels her own story with White’s, achieving a remarkable imaginative sympathy with the writer, a lonely, tormented homosexual fighting his own sadomasochistic demons. Even as she was learning from White’s mistakes, she found herself very much in his shoes, watching her life fall apart as the painfully slow bonding process with Mabel took over. Just how much do animals and humans have in common? The more Macdonald got to know her, the more Mabel confounded her notions about what the species was supposed to represent. Is a hawk a symbol of might or independence, or is that just our attempt to remake the animal world in our own image? Writing with breathless urgency that only rarely skirts the melodramatic, Macdonald broadens her scope well beyond herself to focus on the antagonism between people and the environment.
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a classic in either genre.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0802123411
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Rhimes said “yes” to sharing her insights. Following her may not land you on the cover of a magazine, but you’ll be glad you...
The queen of Thursday night TV delivers a sincere and inspiring account of saying yes to life.
Rhimes, the brain behind hits like Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, is an introvert. She describes herself as a young girl, playing alone in the pantry, making up soap-opera script stories to act out with the canned goods. Speaking in public terrified her; going to events exhausted her. She was always busy, and she didn’t have enough time for her daughters. One Thanksgiving changed it all: when her sister observed that she never said “yes” to anything, Rhimes took it as a challenge. She started, among other things, accepting invitations, facing unpleasant conversations, and playing with her children whenever they asked. The result was a year of challenges and self-discovery that led to a fundamental shift in how she lives her life. Rhimes tells us all about it in the speedy, smart style of her much-loved TV shows. She’s warm, eminently relatable, and funny. We get an idea of what it’s like to be a successful TV writer and producer, to be the ruler of Shondaland, but the focus is squarely on the lessons one can learn from saying yes rather than shying away. Saying no was easy, Rhimes writes. It was comfortable, “a way to disappear.” But after her year, no matter how tempting it is, “I can no longer allow myself to say no. No is no longer in my vocabulary.” The book is a fast read—readers could finish it in the time it takes to watch a full lineup of her Thursday night programing—but it’s not insubstantial. Like a cashmere shawl you pack just in case, Year of Yes is well worth the purse space, and it would make an equally great gift.
Rhimes said “yes” to sharing her insights. Following her may not land you on the cover of a magazine, but you’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7709-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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