A literary tapestry of true crime, memoir and personal essay that simultaneously enthralls and disturbs.
A stint as a juror leads, many years later, to a relationship with a convicted killer.
In 1978, the murder of Larry Hasker rocked peaceful Honolulu, his body found just 25 feet from a highway. At the time, Kansas-born Spalding, recently married to a photographer and living in Honolulu, read about the crime in the paper. Four years later, she became an alternate juror in the murder trial of young Maryann Acker. Hasker was one of two victims in a crime spree; Maryann’s husband William had already been convicted of killing the other, Cesario Arauza. In a bizarre twist, William was a prosecution witness in the case against Maryann, predictably foisting responsibility onto her. Spalding noted numerous anomalies in the proceedings and felt an affinity for Maryann, only 18 at the time of the crime. On the last day of the trial, Spalding arrived late and was abruptly dismissed. Shortly thereafter, she moved to Toronto and thought little of Maryann until a decade later, when she came upon her notes from the trial. After a little digging, she was amazed to learn that Maryann was still in prison and contacted her. (In the meantime, Spalding had become a critically acclaimed novelist and scholar (Mere, 2001, etc.), now married to Booker Prize–winning author Michael Ondaatje.) Spalding’s research supplements letters from Maryann about her early years and recent struggles, and snippets of news articles and transcripts pepper the narrative. The author also fleshes out Maryann’s story before prison as well as her efforts to gain release. Short, elegantly written chapters find Spalding examining her own life through the prism of Maryann’s, with ruminations on family and love and the details of everyday living.
A literary tapestry of true crime, memoir and personal essay that simultaneously enthralls and disturbs.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-375-42476-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Entertaining as pulp fiction, real as a federal indictment.
A cocky bad boy of finance recalls, in much detail and scabrous language, his nasty career as a master of his own universe.
At a young age, in an industry with many precocious bandits, Belfort ran a Long Island–based brokerage with the deceptively WASP-y name of Stratton Oakmont. It was a bucket shop habitually engaged in crooked underwritings. Its persuasive boss was a stock manipulator and tax dodger; he details the stock kiting, share parking, money laundering and customer swindles. Many millions poured in, and cash brought with it excess upon excess. Along with compliant women and copious drugs, there were multiple mansions, many servants, aircraft, yachts and, for all the guys on the trading floor, trophy wives. Among his under-the-table and beneath-the-sheets activities, the author’s most imperative seemed to be sex and dope-taking, despite his professed abiding love for his (now ex) wife and kids. Belfort’s portrait of his family is vivid, as is his depiction of the merry cast of supporting players: sweet Aunt Patricia, a Swiss forger, evil garmentos, Mad Max (Stratton’s CFO and his father). The melodrama covers coke snorting, Quaalude eating, kinky sex, violence, car wrecks, even a sick child and a storm at sea. “A cautionary tale,” the author calls it. It is crass, certainly, and vulgar—and a hell of a read. Belfort displays dirty writing skills many basis points above his tricky ilk. His chronicle ends with his arrest for fraud. Now, with 22 months in the slammer behind him, he’s working on his next book.
Entertaining as pulp fiction, real as a federal indictment.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-553-80546-8
Page Count: 522
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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