Published in Great Britain in 1990, this biography of novelist Violet Hunt by rookie book-author Hardwick, a former schoolteacher, lacks the substance and vivid detail of Barbara Belford's Violet of the same year. Born in 1862, growing up among the Pre-Raphaelites, flirting with Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin, Hunt began her series of scandalous affairs at age 20 and the first of her 17 forgotten novels (like White Rose of Weary Leaf) at age 32. Her friends included Henry James; her lovers, Somerset Maugham and, most notoriously, Ford Madox Ford, who wrote about their relationship in his fiction. Calling Hunt ``one of those women who led the way out of Victorian times into a new age,'' Hardwick admires the writer's ``determination not to accept a predetermined role,'' her attempts to expose the ``hypocrisies and confusion of her society,'' and the way she honestly portrays herself in fiction and in diaries. Unfortunately, leaden and imprecise writing (Hardwick apparently lacked access to certain papers) seem to keep the author from offering more than a fleshless biographical outline and hollow reassessments of Hunt's work. Relying too much on strings of quotes from Hunt's contemporaries, Hardwick rarely digs into her subject's psyche or into the lively literary milieu of the Edwardian London in which she lived. Too often, the reader is left wondering about the specifics. At one point, Hardwick says that Hunt ``was one of the few women who did not succeed in becoming [H.G.] Wells's mistress.'' Later, the author refers to Wells as one of Hunt's lovers. Belford, by comparison, clarified the facts—stating that in ``1906, while still seeing Maugham, James, and Bennett socially, Violet began a year long affair with H.G. Wells.'' Again and again, the reader looks to Belford's lively and extensively researched book to find out what exactly happened to the Hunt that contemporaries described as a ``brilliant,'' ``viperish-looking beauty.'' A thwarted attempt to rescue a vital Violet Hunt from the sidelines of literary history. Read the Belford instead. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Dec. 15, 1991
ISBN: 0-233-98639-1
Page Count: 205
Publisher: Andre Deutsch/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1991
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
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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