by Gretchen Cherington ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 4, 2020
A contemplative memoir that talks about abuse and its aftermath.
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A poet’s daughter examines her father’s legacy.
The American poet Richard Eberhart, who died in 2005 at the age of 101, was the recipient of many of the literary world’s greatest accolades. A long-term poet-in-residence at Dartmouth College, an inductee of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the United States Poet Laureate under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and the recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Eberhart was a highly lauded poet of his age. As his daughter, Cherington, recounts in her memoir, he operated at the center of a large literary circle that included such legendary poets as Allen Ginsberg, Richard Wilbur, and Anne Sexton. The author recounts her own novel experiences with these poets while also reflecting on her father and the challenges that she says that she faced after a childhood spent under his roof. Cherington’s portrait of her father is unsparing, and it includes a disturbing description of an instance of sexual abuse when she was 17; she also writes of other, earlier instances when she was physically abused by a family friend. Cherington writes that she worked throughout her life to process these events in addition to trauma associated with her mother’s epilepsy, and she recounts this effort with grace and clarity. Drawing from her own experiences as well as Eberhart’s ample archive at Dartmouth’s Rauner Library, the author offers compelling anecdotes and analysis. Her writing on her mother’s illness is particularly potent, as Cherington interweaves scenes of childhood terror with an adult awareness of the stifling silence that made her fear impossible to soothe. Her narrative is occasionally muddled by scenes of her professional life as a consultant and moments of awkward conversation; one such instance occurs in an otherwise charming scene in which the author goes dancing with a romantic partner. At the end of the evening, she whispers in his ear the clichéd phrase, “How’d we ever find each other in this godforsaken town?” Despite this, Cherington’s memoir presents a persuasive account of her effort to reckon with the past.
A contemplative memoir that talks about abuse and its aftermath.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-711-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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by Steve Martin illustrated by Harry Bliss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
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IndieBound Bestseller
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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by Steve Martin ; illustrated by Harry Bliss
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by Steve Martin
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by Steve Martin & illustrated by C.F. Payne
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