Charming, “near-daily snapshots” of fatherhood.
An Italian father reflects on raising three daughters.
In this short, succinct, and sweet collection of essays, which became a bestseller in Italy, Bussola writes about being a work-at-home father of three young girls. He shares the funny, sad, angry, bittersweet, loving jumble of thoughts and feelings that make up being a parent who is trying as hard as he can to do the right thing, say the right thing, and be the right thing at the right moment so his girls grow into intelligent, compassionate women like their mother. “This book is a journal of sorts,” writes the author. “It’s about how being a father has made me a better man, a more confident artist, and a more attentive partner….The view [the girls] provide gives me a different way of looking at everything, even at what I was before they came along.” Bussola is used to the middle-of-the-night sicknesses, the fears of attending school for the first time, and the quirky, wonder-filled, often hilarious questions only children can ask from their different perspectives. Throughout the collection, readers will feel the author’s palpable love and empathy for his children along with the dogged tiredness that pervades a parent’s life and the constant questioning and self-doubt of whether one is doing everything possible to make sure the day flows smoothly from one moment to the next. Along with his thoughts on life as a father, Bussola shares comments on the world, whether it’s the prejudice he sees around him, the irritation he feels toward a telemarketer, or the suspicions he houses toward a stranger who appears at his gate who wants nothing more than a bottle of water. These commentaries help balance the essays, which could tend toward the overly cute if they focused only on his children.
Charming, “near-daily snapshots” of fatherhood.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-14-313137-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he...
The latest from French writer/filmmaker Carrère (My Life as a Russian Novel, 2010, etc.) is an awkward but intermittently touching hybrid of novel and autobiography.
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he describes powerfully. Carrère and his partner, Hélène, then return to Paris—and do so with a mutual devotion that's been renewed and deepened by all they've witnessed. Back in France, Hélène's sister Juliette, a magistrate and mother of three small daughters, has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that crippled her in adolescence. After her death, Carrère decides to write an oblique tribute and an investigation into the ravages of grief. He focuses first on Juliette's colleague and intimate friend Étienne, himself an amputee and survivor of childhood cancer, and a man in whose talkativeness and strength Carrère sees parallels to himself ("He liked to talk about himself. It's my way, he said, of talking to and about others, and he remarked astutely that it was my way, too”). Étienne is a perceptive, dignified person and a loyal, loving friend, and Carrère's portrait of him—including an unexpectedly fascinating foray into Étienne and Juliette's chief professional accomplishment, which was to tap the new European courts for help in overturning longtime French precedents that advantaged credit-card companies over small borrowers—is impressive. Less successful is Carrère's account of Juliette's widower, Patrice, an unworldly cartoonist whom he admires for his fortitude but seems to consider something of a simpleton. Now and again, especially in the Étienne sections, Carrère's meditations pay off in fresh, pungent insights, and his account of Juliette's last days and of the aftermath (especially for her daughters) is quietly harrowing.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9261-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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