Hard on the heels of the death of one princess, Glatt gathers info and gossip about the world’s other favorite princess, Grace Kelly of Monaco, and her three rebellious children, Prince Albert and Princesses Caroline and Stephanie. It’s difficult to judge the merits of an exposÇ such as this one without looking at it in the context of current times. True, the seemingly fairy tale fate of glamorous Hollywood movie star Grace Kelly becoming Princess Grace of Monaco in 1956 offers the perfect fodder for an escapist read, but one still has to question Glatt’s (Lost in Hollywood: The Fast Times and Short Life of River Phoenix, 1995, etc.) timing. Short paragraphs and out-of-place comments seem inserted after-the-fact to connect the Monaco royals to Diana and capitalize on the current hot topic of paparazzi invasion. Whereas a biography of a deceased public figure doesn—t necessarily have to become tabloid material, Glatt focuses his on the remarkably irresponsible behavior and embarrassingly ill-informed choices made by Monaco’s ruling family after the death of Princess Grace. This direction taints Glatt’s intentions (whatever they may really be) with a gossipy cast. The author did obtain the cooperation of Prince Albert and others close to the family, but that doesn—t necessarily transform his book from a gratuitous ogling into an enlightening explanation of their tragic misfortune. As for the writing, Glatt repeats himself: several anecdotes and quotes show up again and again in only slightly different form. However, for what it’s worth, Glatt understands how to string together a ton of minute, only momentarily intriguing details into an action-packed, larger-than-life TV movie of the week. For those interested in glimpsing how royalty live, this is probably, and perhaps regrettably, a winner.
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-19326-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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 2024 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.
bookshelf
