by Jennifer Weiner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 11, 2016
An exhaustive and exhausting autobiography of Weiner's life to date.
A bestselling author reveals everything about her life.
Novelist Weiner (Who Do You Love, 2015, etc.) gives readers an in-depth look into her life in these nonfiction essays, the subjects of which have provided much of the fodder for her popular books. Going as far back as when her grandparents met, the author provides an overly detailed timeline of her life. For those who want to know how and when Weiner began writing; what grade school and high school were like for an overweight introvert; why her mother came out as a lesbian and the effect that had on the author; her college life, including the classes she took; her ambitions during and after college; the boyfriends she had and the lovesickness she felt when they left her; how she felt about being a mother and how returning to work when her first daughter was very young affected her; the author’s thoughts on food and weight gain and loss; how her books became so successful; and a host of other minutiae, look no further. The essays are honest, sometimes funny, and sometimes emotional, and they help to show what life can be like for a woman and/or a Jewish woman, but there's so much packed into the book that it becomes overwhelming. Weiner's ability to recall physical details about her 8-year-old classmates or the books she read starting at age 4 may seem impressive, but it's those same details that eventually bog readers down. For Weiner’s many fans, the book will answer the question of “where does she find her writing material?” Readers of her novels and those who like knowing the intimate, personal lives of popular celebrities will find plenty to absorb in this fat volume.
An exhaustive and exhausting autobiography of Weiner's life to date.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-2340-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
Share your opinion of this book
More by Jennifer Weiner
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Tom Clavin
BOOK REVIEW
by Tom Clavin
BOOK REVIEW
by Tom Clavin
BOOK REVIEW
by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin
by Emmanuel Carrère translated by Linda Coverdale ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2011
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he...
The latest from French writer/filmmaker Carrère (My Life as a Russian Novel, 2010, etc.) is an awkward but intermittently touching hybrid of novel and autobiography.
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he describes powerfully. Carrère and his partner, Hélène, then return to Paris—and do so with a mutual devotion that's been renewed and deepened by all they've witnessed. Back in France, Hélène's sister Juliette, a magistrate and mother of three small daughters, has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that crippled her in adolescence. After her death, Carrère decides to write an oblique tribute and an investigation into the ravages of grief. He focuses first on Juliette's colleague and intimate friend Étienne, himself an amputee and survivor of childhood cancer, and a man in whose talkativeness and strength Carrère sees parallels to himself ("He liked to talk about himself. It's my way, he said, of talking to and about others, and he remarked astutely that it was my way, too”). Étienne is a perceptive, dignified person and a loyal, loving friend, and Carrère's portrait of him—including an unexpectedly fascinating foray into Étienne and Juliette's chief professional accomplishment, which was to tap the new European courts for help in overturning longtime French precedents that advantaged credit-card companies over small borrowers—is impressive. Less successful is Carrère's account of Juliette's widower, Patrice, an unworldly cartoonist whom he admires for his fortitude but seems to consider something of a simpleton. Now and again, especially in the Étienne sections, Carrère's meditations pay off in fresh, pungent insights, and his account of Juliette's last days and of the aftermath (especially for her daughters) is quietly harrowing.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9261-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
Share your opinion of this book
More by Emmanuel Carrère
BOOK REVIEW
by Emmanuel Carrère ; translated by John Lambert
BOOK REVIEW
by Emmanuel Carrère ; translated by John Lambert
BOOK REVIEW
by Emmanuel Carrère ; translated by John Lambert
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.