A sad tale drawn out and viewed through rose-colored glasses.
An initially inspired juxtaposition of the lives of the two Spanish sister queens grows saccharine in the hands of British historical researcher Fox (Jane Boleyn, 2007).
The daughters of Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon were positioned at a very young age to marry the most illustrious monarchs of Europe and inherit enormous power in their own right. Yet both were outmaneuvered by the men around them—father, husbands, son—and both eventually squandered and lost their power, dying in shame and isolation. Fox fashions a sympathetic, storybook narrative of the two sisters, daughters of strong monarchs, especially their mother, who spearheaded the Reconquista of 1492. The girls were educated in Latin and married off in their mid-teens, Juana to Philip of Burgundy, and Katherine to Arthur, Henry VII of England’s eldest son. Fate intervened swiftly and changed the course of history: A series of deaths of her older siblings left Juana in the position of inheriting her parents’ kingdom, while her new husband began systematically to rob her of her authority, casting doubt about her sanity; in England, Arthur’s death left Katherine vulnerable until finally she was wedded by his brother Henry VIII and made queen—temporarily. Juana, for her part, despite her sovereignty and the many children she would bear her husband, was essentially disinherited from and then imprisoned first by her father, Ferdinand, then her own son, Carlos V, for the remaining 46 years of her life. Was she truly mad or deliberately enfeebled in the power struggle? Her sister Katherine, more politically astute, had acted as Henry VIII’s equal, until her inability to provide a male heir prompted him to divorce her and she was forced to acquiesce. Fox takes the side of the ill-fated sisters, but she does not offer any new light through the murky historical record.
A sad tale drawn out and viewed through rose-colored glasses.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-345-51604-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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