by Lois Gould ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1998
Novelist Gould’s (No Brakes, 1997; Medusa’s Gift, 1991) memoir vividly captures both her joyless childhood as daughter of an aloof fashion-designer mother and the old New York that shaped them both. Jo Copeland, though not now a household name, was once a star of the American fashion industry. In a career spanning the years from the 1920s to the 1960s, Copeland rose from fabric cutter to the designer who brought glamour to American fashion. But while Copeland’s designs were romantic, her outlook was not. Her attitude, described with characteristic acerbic wit by Gould, was: “Sexy was wonderful. Sex wasn’t.” In her daughter’s honest and cool analysis (which the reader grows to share), Copeland emerges as a woman for whom clothes were a refuge from the facts of life. Given that Copeland pursued her career at the cost of her marriage (her husband felt he couldn’t “possess” her and walked out) and that her own mother died in childbirth, Copeland’s extreme withdrawal from family life is, if not pardonable, then at least comprehensible. While Gould infuses Mommy Dressing with bitter memories of a painful family life, her memoir lives up to its claim to be a love story. It portrays a child obsessed with a fear of abandonment and a painful desire for love and affection, realistic responses in light of the noticeable lack of warmth conveyed in the scenes of daily life depicting solitary dinners, stony silences, fiery outbursts, and intimate betrayals. The reader perceives both Gould’s struggle to bridge the gap of silence that long separated her from her mother and her painful awareness of that impossibility, along with a mature acceptance of her mother’s choices. Breezily readable yet deeply painful, Gould’s memoir captures the glamour, the mystery, and the pain of her mother’s personal and private life.(24 b&w illustrations)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-49053-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
Share your opinion of this book
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.