A turbulent childhood is accurately rendered in this gritty, raw memoir of Carlisle’s family and her search for the truth...
Carlisle (Writing/Trinity Univ.) chronicles her quest to know the mother who died when the author was 3 weeks old.
The author had always been told that her mother died in a car accident, but after meeting with a detective when she was 8, she was left pondering what had actually happened to her. Carlisle had memories of living with her grandmother, Spence, and her good friend, Dee, and when Spence died, of moving in with her grandfather and his second wife. Both groups gave her snippets of information about her mother which often contradicted each other and never satisfied the desire to understand her past. Carlisle writes about how her childhood was different than most of her schoolmates’: her grandfather owned an adult video store, they lived on a boat with six cats, she had no idea who her father was, and she could find very few pictures of her mother. Her story intertwines the musings of a child who doesn't understand the complex world of adults, especially the dysfunctional adults who made up her world—the johns, the alcoholics, the men who frequented her grandfather's video store—with the adult woman on a mission to find out as much as she could about her mother. From the numerous, minute details the author includes, she was obviously loved, but she still lays bare the ugly moments, particularly of her grandfather, in her portrayals of her family. The nature of her mother's death and the compassion Carlisle feels toward her family justify the slow reveal of her family's sordid past. The book also includes a reading group guide and a conversation with the author.
A turbulent childhood is accurately rendered in this gritty, raw memoir of Carlisle’s family and her search for the truth about her mother's death.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4520-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
Despite the whopping length, there's not a wasted word in this superb, swiftly moving narrative, which brings new and...
A great, troubled, and, it seems, overlooked president receives his due from the Pulitzer-winning historian/biographer McCullough (Truman, 1992, etc.).
John Adams, to gauge by the letters and diaries from which McCullough liberally quotes, did not exactly go out of his way to assume a leadership role in the tumultuous years of the American Revolution, though he was always “ambitious to excel.” Neither, however, did he shy from what he perceived to be a divinely inspired historical necessity; he took considerable personal risks in spreading the American colonists’ rebellion across his native Massachusetts. Adams gained an admirable reputation for fearlessness and for devotion not only to his cause but also to his beloved wife Abigail. After the Revolution, though he was quick to yield to the rebellion's military leader, George Washington, part of the reason that the New England states enjoyed influence in a government dominated by Virginians was the force of Adams's character. His lifelong nemesis, who tested that character in many ways, was also one of his greatest friends: Thomas Jefferson, who differed from Adams in almost every important respect. McCullough depicts Jefferson as lazy, a spendthrift, always in debt and always in trouble, whereas Adams never rested and never spent a penny without good reason, a holdover from the comparative poverty of his youth. Despite their sometimes vicious political battles (in a bafflingly complex environment that McCullough carefully deconstructs), the two shared a love of books, learning, and revolutionary idealism, and it is one of those wonderful symmetries of history that both died on the same day, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. While McCullough never misses an episode in Adams's long and often troubled life, he includes enough biographical material on Jefferson that this can be considered two biographies for the price of one—which explains some of its portliness.
Despite the whopping length, there's not a wasted word in this superb, swiftly moving narrative, which brings new and overdue honor to a Founding Father.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-81363-7
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
What we've all been awaiting: the first of Hemingway's posthumous works he began in 1958 and finished in 1960. This is a memoir of his expatriate days in the twenties, and MacLeish's little poem about the young man with the panther good looks who whittled a style for his times in the sawmill attic in Paris comes to life here. What also comes to light is the "inside story," or the very personal revelations, parts of whicy may become a cause scandale. Not only is the Fitzgerald portrait ungenerous, but the disclosures of his sexual difficulties with Zelda are embarrassing. Miss Stein is also victimized, and there are allusions to puzzling perversities. Pound, Ford, Eliot, Lewis and Joyce are around and they are treated with affection, or affectionate malice. The best passages are the descriptive ones— fine writing with all the supple surety of Sun— of bookstalls, cafes, streets, the Seine, race tracks, and travel. And of course there's Hemingway on his wife Hadley, and Hemingway on Hemingway..... Mary McCarthy's famous attack on Salinger scored him for following Papa's special club of OK people (like him) versus the "others" (unlike him). The memoir has something of that snobbery and certain people may go after it accordingly. Still, whatever the indiscretions, it is an important work, a literary source from a master. There can be little doubt of its interest and attraction for many as a reprise of a now legendary time when Hemingway was young and happy and "invulnerable," and a place— well, "There is never any ending to Paris.
Pub Date: May 5, 1964
ISBN: 0684833638
Page Count: 207
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1964
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