The sisters’ trust that Mills was not a gossip is borne out in this charming portrait of a small Southern town and its most...
In her first book, a journalist offers a gentle, loving portrait of a reclusive writer.
After To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960, Harper Lee (b. 1926) was overwhelmed with attention. She sat for interviews, signed so many copies of the novel that she developed tendonitis, and watched with alarm as Monroeville, Alabama, the small town in which she lived, was turned into a tourist attraction. Then she retreated, refusing to talk to reporters or cooperate with biographers, determined to live her life quietly and privately. In 2001, when Mills came to Monroeville on assignment from the Chicago Tribune, she expected to take notes on the town’s ambience and, at most, to interview a few people who knew Lee. But Lee—known by her first name, Nelle—and her 89-year-old sister, Alice, a lawyer, were interested in Chicago’s One Book, One Chicago program, which had chosen Mockingbird for that year’s citywide reading. When Mills rang the doorbell at the Lees’ home, Alice invited her in for a long conversation. This led to repeated visits and resulted in a friendship that continues, even with both sisters now in assisted living facilities. Mills portrays Nelle as a grown-up Scout, the feisty and defiant heroine of Mockingbird. “Even at their ages,” writes the author, “it was clear Alice was the steady, responsible older sister, and Nelle Harper the spirited, spontaneous younger one.” The sisters lived modestly, with an eclectic circle of friends that included “a retired hairdresser, a pharmacy clerk, a one-time librarian, and a former bookkeeper who also was the wife of a retired bank president.” Often, friends joined in the outings, breakfasts and dinners that Mills and Lee shared. Together, they watched two movies about Truman Capote, with whom Lee had worked as researcher for In Cold Blood; their relationship soured later. “Truman was a world-class gossip,” Lee told Mills.
The sisters’ trust that Mills was not a gossip is borne out in this charming portrait of a small Southern town and its most famous resident.Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59420-519-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.
Full-immersion journalist Kidder (Home Town, 1999, etc.) tries valiantly to keep up with a front-line, muddy-and-bloody general in the war against infectious disease in Haiti and elsewhere.
The author occasionally confesses to weariness in this gripping account—and why not? Paul Farmer, who has an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Harvard, appears to be almost preternaturally intelligent, productive, energetic, and devoted to his causes. So trotting alongside him up Haitian hills, through international airports and Siberian prisons and Cuban clinics, may be beyond the capacity of a mere mortal. Kidder begins with a swift account of his first meeting with Farmer in Haiti while working on a story about American soldiers, then describes his initial visit to the doctor’s clinic, where the journalist felt he’d “encountered a miracle.” Employing guile, grit, grins, and gifts from generous donors (especially Boston contractor Tom White), Farmer has created an oasis in Haiti where TB and AIDS meet their Waterloos. The doctor has an astonishing rapport with his patients and often travels by foot for hours over difficult terrain to treat them in their dwellings (“houses” would be far too grand a word). Kidder pauses to fill in Farmer’s amazing biography: his childhood in an eccentric family sounds like something from The Mosquito Coast; a love affair with Roald Dahl’s daughter ended amicably; his marriage to a Haitian anthropologist produced a daughter whom he sees infrequently thanks to his frenetic schedule. While studying at Duke and Harvard, Kidder writes, Farmer became obsessed with public health issues; even before he’d finished his degrees he was spending much of his time in Haiti establishing the clinic that would give him both immense personal satisfaction and unsurpassed credibility in the medical worlds he hopes to influence.
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50616-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
A courageous and thought-provoking memoir.
A bestselling memoirist’s account of coping with an unexpected midlife evolution in sexual identity.
When Wizenberg, who runs the popular Orangette blog, received a jury duty summons, she never thought that it would lead to divorce. In court, her eyes were immediately drawn to a female defense attorney dressed in a men’s suit. Her thoughts lingered on the attractive stranger after each day’s proceedings. But guilt at being “a woman wearing a wedding ring” made the author feel increasingly guilty for the obsession that seized her. Her husband, Brandon, a successful Seattle restaurateur, and their daughter were the “stars” that guided her path; the books she had written revolved like planets around the sun of their relationship and the restaurants they had founded together. However, in the weeks that followed, Wizenberg shocked herself by telling her husband about the attraction and suggesting that they open their marriage to polyamorous experimentation. Reading the work of writers like Adrienne Rich who had discovered their lesbianism later in life, Wizenberg engaged in deep, sometimes-painful self-interrogation. The author remembered the story of a married uncle, a man she resembled, who came out as gay and then later died of AIDS as well as a brief lesbian flirtation in late adolescence where “nothing happened.” Eventually, Wizenberg began dating the lawyer and fell in love with her. Wizenberg then began the painful process of separating herself from Brandon and, later, from their restaurant businesses that she had quietly seen as impediments to her writing. Feeling unfulfilled by Nora, a self-professed “stone top” who preferred to give pleasure rather than receive it, Wizenberg began to date a nonbinary person named Ash. Through that relationship, she came to embrace both gender and sexual fluidity. Interwoven throughout with research insights into the complexity of female sexual identity, Wizenberg’s book not only offers a glimpse into the shifting nature of selfhood; it also celebrates one woman’s hard-won acceptance of her own sexual difference.
A courageous and thought-provoking memoir.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4299-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
