A compassionate, belletristic cross-cultural memoir.
A detail-rich reminiscence of the author’s parents’ lives in postwar colonial Egypt.
Warner is an acclaimed scholar of literature and mythology, and here she applies much of her skills as an observer and close reader to the story of her parents. Esmond, her father, was a patrician, exact Briton (his father was a leading cricket expert) who met her mother, Ilia, in her native Italy when he was a British officer during World War II. In Warner’s reckoning, Ilia saw an opportunity to escape her rural station; Esmond was simply smitten by a tall, attractive, bright woman. Despite various cultural barriers, they married quickly in 1944. Three years later, shortly after Warner was born, the family moved to Cairo, where Esmond ran one of the city’s most popular bookshops. Warner’s memoir mostly covers the family’s stint in Egypt, which ended in 1952 when riots and fires closed the shop and spelled the end of England’s colonial presence. That drama aside, the book is largely an intimate story, alive in the particulars that Warner uses to explore her parents’ sometimes-incomprehensible relationship. A pair of expensive shoes Esmond bought for Ilia reveals how status-conscious they were; a pot of anchovy paste speaks to Ilia’s aspiration to Britishness; a photo of a popular nightclub singer opens questions about whether Esmond had an affair. The “unreliable” aspect of the book speaks to the fact that many of its events occurred before Warner was even born. Nonetheless, she draws plenty of insights through modest objects, from bookplates to cigarette tins to powder compacts. She recognizes these items can reveal only so much: “I moved among my ghosts and rummaged about in the past and tried to find my way back through the darkness that wraps them,” she writes. Yet she sheds light on a loving, if sometimes strained, relationship.
A compassionate, belletristic cross-cultural memoir.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68137-644-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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