A sympathetic perspective on Graves’ eventful life.
A sensitive rendering of the poet’s formative years.
As Wilson (Edward Thomas: From Adlestrop to Arras: A Biography, 2015, etc.) acknowledges, Graves (1895-1985) has been the subject of several well-regarded biographies. She justifies her new examination of his youth, war experiences, and early career on the basis of material recently available, including published letters to a fellow soldier, eight unpublished letters to one of his sisters, and his lover Laura Riding’s autobiographical writings. Despite these sources, however, this biography offers a familiar, if finely nuanced, portrait of Graves, his family, and his scandalous relationship with the mercurial Riding. The author sees World War I as “the defining experience of his life,” praising his war poems as “unsurpassed in their variety, ranging from the brutally realistic and harrowing to the allegorical,” marked by “technical brilliance.” Although Graves destroyed most of those poems—deeming them “journalistic”—Wilson claims that they are “among the best to come out of that war.” But the poet’s youthful “adherence to the traditional forms and metres, together with his belief in rhyme,” may have contributed to his later assessment on aesthetic grounds. Graves’ service was typical for upper-class young men who enlisted: They were eager for the adventure and soon shocked at the reality. Battle experiences, the deaths of many friends, and a severe wounding left him suffering fears and terrors for years afterward. Wilson examines Graves’ platonic male attractions and his relief—proving to himself that he was solidly heterosexual—when he decided to marry. Children quickly followed, and the “relatively spoilt,” naïve, and impractical couple found themselves repeatedly in financial straits, turning to their parents for help. Graves’ life was upended by Riding, who thrived in “a world of violent emotions.” The author vividly recounts the chaos, “near hysteria,” and “bizarre and dramatic events” that she created and Graves’ willing complicity. He eventually left his wife and children to live with Laura until, 10 years later, she left him.
A sympathetic perspective on Graves’ eventful life.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4729-2914-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Bloomsbury Continuum
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
