Pallid, unconvincing portrait of the doyenne of the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood, the mid-Victorian art movement whose members—Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, Holman Hunt—were as well known for their laudanum and license as for their innovative paintings. It seems to be true, as Jones (an English journalist) admits, that `` `finding' Christina as a person is not an easy task....'' Primary sources about the neurasthenic and sexually repressed Rossetti are in extremely short supply, and her earliest biographers seemed intent on canonization. Jones, however, generally accepts her subject's explanations for her actions at face value, neglecting the revelations that the application of modern psychology to Rossetti's behavioral patterns might have produced. Many readers will suspect deeper motivations for Rossetti's rejection of Charles Cayley as a suitor than the stated fact that Cayley did not belong to the Church of England. Jones also seems unaware of the sheer oddness of much of Rossetti's behavior: When, for instance, a contemporary points out that Rossetti was in the habit of picking up scraps of paper on the street ``in case they had the name of Jesus printed on them,'' the author allows the information to pass without comment. Jones seems most intent on reestablishing Rossetti's reputation as a major Victorian poet and as a kind of protofeminist; but except for the gothic ``Goblin Market,'' few of Rossetti's verses rise above clichÇd sentimentalism, and Jones's comparison of Rossetti's work to that of Emily Dickinson is truly far-fetched. The author is only slightly more successful in depicting her subject as a victim of male domination. If anything, Rossetti played the ``frail blossom'' for all it was worth, especially in relating to her long-suffering brother, William. Disappointingly short on both drama and insight. (Nineteen b&w illustrations.)
Pub Date: May 21, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-07017-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
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 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
© Copyright 2025 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.
