An elegant work that provides readers with a better understanding of a beloved author's life.
A fresh biography of the enigmatic British novelist.
Jean Rhys (1890-1979) was a mysterious, fragmented, complicated literary figure. Piecing together the puzzle of her subject’s life, veteran novelist and biographer Seymour takes readers on a wild and satisfying ride. The author begins with Rhys’ childhood on the Caribbean island of Dominica, where she struggled with the mismatched personalities of her doting father and jealous, abusive mother. Escaping into books, she went on to work as a chorus girl, traveling around England. In 1919, she married a French Dutch journalist and spy, and her subsequent experiences—e.g., economic instability, marital strife, and the devastating loss of her firstborn son—fueled her writing. Influenced by her contemporaries, including Hemingway, Conrad, and Joyce, Rhys was both talented and connected, but her career didn’t take off until later in life. For much of her adult life, Rhys relied on the kindness of relatives and friends, adopting a transient lifestyle that took her from city to city and often thrust her into squalor. Feuds with others involved in the publishing and adaptations of her work coupled with unchecked alcoholism—“my will is quite weakened because I drink too much”—did not serve her well professionally even as her talent gained her a significant following. With one surviving daughter who spent little of her life with her and three marriages in her background, her family life remained rocky at times. At age 50, a breakdown propelled Rhys to take up residence in a rectory to convalesce. She once said, "If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. I will not have earned death.” As Seymour clearly shows in this compelling biography, Rhys lived by her credo and continued to write: “Heartbreak, poverty, notoriety, breakdowns and even imprisonment: all became grist to Rhys’s fiction-making mill.”
An elegant work that provides readers with a better understanding of a beloved author's life.Pub Date: June 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-00612-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
A fascinating and funny look at the life of a famous actor who found further fulfillment through giving back.
The actor discusses his career on the stage and in film, and his life focusing on the value of art and public service.
Now 66, Stern, perhaps best known for his roles in Home Alone and City Slickers, is no longer "the precocious teenager who moved to New York as a seventeen-year-old, at least ten years younger than all of my friends, the youngest dad at all my kids’ school events.” As he discusses his childhood in Maryland, his introduction to the theater, and writing a musical version of Lord of the Flies, the author's love of the work shows through on every page—as does his family’s legacy of a strong work ethic (his mother told him, “I don’t care what you do but you are out of this house when you turn eighteen”). Realizing that “academics were not going to get me anywhere,” he committed to acting. After some early stage work, he began working in films, appearing in a number of critically successful projects in the late 1970s and early ’80s, including Breaking Away and Diner. Stern analyzes key moments in the development of his craft, as well as the twists and turns of a very public life, which included work with the USO and the experience of being sued for $25 million over a TV show. Although readers may pick up the book to learn more about Hollywood, his focus on his work-life balance brings some of the most memorable passages, from his narration and directing work in the TV series The Wonder Years (which included no on-screen billing), which helped him overcome his childhood dyslexia, to his experience working with the Boys & Girls Club and his lifelong focus on public service.
A fascinating and funny look at the life of a famous actor who found further fulfillment through giving back.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781632280930
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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