by Isobel; Ed. by Peter Browning Field ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2005
Though the droll tone sometimes dampens the effect, her joy for life is omnipresent, and her memoir timeless in its...
A reprint of a 1937 autobiography by the stepdaughter of Robert Louis Stevenson, enhanced by an editor's introduction, explanatory footnotes and an editor's epilogue.
Born in Indianapolis in 1858, Field carried vivid memories of her childhood late into her life. Her acute memory, bolstered by her natural storytelling ability, renders a rather unexceptional childhood in Indiana and California interesting to readers more than a century later. She also discusses her first marriage and the birth of her son Austin, who would become a successful playwright. Much of the rest of the memoir is set in Hawaii and Samoa, where Field lived with family members. In 1876, when Field was 18, her mother Fanny met Robert Louis Stevenson in the French town of Grez, and Fanny and the soon-to-be-famous author married in 1880. The next year, Stevenson published his masterpiece, Treasure Island. In short order, three more beloved books would follow: Kidnapped, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Black Arrow. In 1894, the congenitally unhealthy Stevenson died at the age of 44. Though Field lived for another five decades, she ends her memoir in the year of Stevenson’s death, saying nothing of her second marriage, her mother’s death or her own considerable wealth, a portion of which came from inheritance.
Though the droll tone sometimes dampens the effect, her joy for life is omnipresent, and her memoir timeless in its unpretentious presentation of the quotidian, both in her own life and in the life of one of literature’s most beloved authors.Pub Date: April 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-944220-18-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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 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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