Nonetheless, an inspirational, almost spiritual read, perfect for gift-giving.
In a sequel of sorts to Swimming to Antarctica (2004), renowned distance swimmer Cox tells the story of an ordinary practice swim that took a decidedly extraordinary turn.
She was about to wrap up her workout when she realized that she was being followed by a baby whale, who had somehow been separated from his mother. Cox was dog-tired, but realized that if she came ashore, the whale would try to follow her and would die. So she stayed in the water for hours, swimming around with the baby she dubbed Grayson, waiting and watching and hoping his mother would return. Cox vividly recreates the experience of the exhausting swim. Commenting on her hunger, she writes: “All I wanted was a . . . cup of hot chocolate with a mound of whipped cream as big as Big Bear Mountain in the distance . . . or carrot cake with pecans and cinnamon and clove, pineapple and coconut, or a slice of hot apple strudel—any of these would do.” The narrative transports readers to the majestic, wonderful world of the ocean, filled with dolphins, small fish and odd plants. When Grayson’s mother finally turns up, Cox is astounded by her size, her girth, the barnacles on her chin, the rubbery roughness of her cheek. Still, transforming the story of one afternoon into a book-length fable, even a short book-length fable, is a bit of a stretch. The tale is burdened with overwrought musings on the meaning of the time spent with Grayson: “The waiting is as important as the doing; it’s the time you spend training and the rest in between; it’s the painting the subject and the space in between.”
Nonetheless, an inspirational, almost spiritual read, perfect for gift-giving.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2006
ISBN: 0-307-26454-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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
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