An engaging read and an enticing peek into the secret lives of two celebrated families.
A fascinating, if sometimes scattershot, memoir detailing the author’s life in a dysfunctional family.
Burlingham’s (The Starlings in London, 2016) life history is complicated. Now in her fourth marriage (this time to her college sweetheart), she reflects on the combination of forces that resulted in so much turmoil. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Lewis Tiffany, “maker of silver and fine jewelry,” the great-granddaughter of Louis Comfort Tiffany, “the creator of Tiffany glass,” and the granddaughter of Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham, disciple and companion of Anna Freud. Grandmother Dorothy turned her back on the glamorous Tiffany lifestyle—and the dark outbursts of her father’s rages—when she married surgeon Robert Burlingham. Unfortunately, Robert was bipolar, and his manic periods terrified Dorothy. Four children later, she packed up her brood, left America, and headed to Vienna, undertaking psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud and placing her two oldest children (including the author’s father) in analysis with Sigmund’s daughter, Anna. Dorothy’s close friendship with Anna became a dominating, and much resented, factor during Burlingham’s formative years. When the Freuds moved to London in 1938, Dorothy followed, eventually moving in with Anna. The author was born and raised in America, but she, her parents (Bob and Rigmor Burlingham), and four siblings moved to London for six years in 1957. Her father had suffered a mental breakdown and took his family with him when he returned to Anna to resume lifelong psychoanalysis. The memoir whiplashes back and forth in time as Burlingham alternates between chronological storytelling about her ancestors and vignettes from her own childhood and adolescence. The jumps can be a bit jarring, but they present short events that effectively serve to illustrate, rather than directly state, the frustrations, loneliness, and considerable anger Burlingham experienced as she sought attention and approval from a father who was emotionally unavailable. Readers may agree with the author’s negative assessment of endless psychoanalysis—especially given the bizarre dynamic of her father receiving treatment from his mother’s companion. These two women were far closer to him than were his own children. Ironically, the memoir itself reads much like the author’s own passage through a long psychoanalytic tunnel. She did get one thing from her Tiffany heritage: her father shared with her an appreciation of beautiful precious and, especially, semiprecious stones. She uses them as an interesting literary device to introduce different periods and people in her life. Expressive prose eases readers through a very personal exploration of the underbelly of a complex family: “I never went with [my father] on his solitary walks. Alone, he ambled along the chilly shoreline, especially on sunny days when light shone through the wet stones, revealing their yellow-orange to reddish-brown to rich red tones.” Photos are included.
An engaging read and an enticing peek into the secret lives of two celebrated families.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 212
Publisher: The Amber Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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