For American readers, a peek at British life upstairs as it really was.
A gossipy take on the glossy but star-crossed lives of two well-connected women who inspired writers and painters but were often lonely and unfulfilled.
Like a Merchant-Ivory movie, the story told by British food-writer Dimbleby takes place in a luxurious country house (Kiddington Hall in Oxfordshire) whose guests included royalty (the Prince of Wales), politicians (Herbert Asquith), famous writers (Henry James), and artists (Edward Burne-Jones), all making and breaking romantic attachments. It makes for an entertaining if speculative read, as the author tries to understand her great-grandmother May and great-aunt Amy. In 1873, May, the daughter of a clergyman noted for her beauty and charm, married Henry Gaskell, a wealthy former soldier. She bore him three children (Amy was the eldest), but his reclusive habits, long silences, and morose personality soon irreparably strained the marriage. May began to spend more time away from him, both abroad and in London, where she became a popular member of influential social and cultural circles. In 1892, she met pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones and became the last romantic obsession of his life. It appears that the long-married painter’s relationship with May was intense but fundamentally platonic, despite the passionate effusions in his many letters to her. He died in 1898, shortly after Amy’s marriage to a soldier. Though May enjoyed close friendships with other distinguished men and went on to do valuable work during WWI, she never quite recovered from the loss of Burne-Jones. She was hit hard again in 1910 when Amy “died of a broken heart,” as May told her grandchildren. An enigmatic beauty who inspired three novelists and was loved by many men, Amy was never able to find love herself. Restless, she traveled constantly, perhaps developing a fatal opium habit in the Orient.
For American readers, a peek at British life upstairs as it really was.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2005
ISBN: 0-609-60999-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2004
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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