A worthy book, particularly for readers unfamiliar with any of the full-length Streisand biographies.
In the latest in the Jewish Lives series, an experienced biographer delves into Barbra Streisand's psyche.
Early on, Gabler (Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, 2006, etc.), two-time winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, establishes that he is not producing a detailed account of the singer/actress' life. Rather, he constructs a book-length biographical essay, filled with context about Streisand's Jewish persona as a hindrance and, eventually, in unexpected ways, as an aid to her professional successes. The author uses his stated goal as a partial explanation of why he never tried to interview his subject; his full explanation comes across as a series of rationales that weaken an otherwise admirable book. Born in 1942, Streisand harbored an urge to achieve stardom that seems nearly inexplicable considering the obstacles she faced. Gabler examines her childhood and adolescence with remarkable depth and skill given the book’s format as part of a limiting series theme. Streisand achieved many of her goals while still a teenager, making the author’s attention to her childhood and adolescence especially vital. At times, the author concedes certain ironies, as when Fanny Brice's daughter originally opposed casting Streisand as Brice in Funny Girl. "The girl who was always called too Jewish to play anyone but Jews was herself too Jewish to play a Jew who sought to temper her Jewishness," writes Gabler. Because Streisand's Jewish-looking face—particularly her large nose—figured prominently in the obstacles she overcame, Gabler is forced to deal with surface appearances, which leads to judgments that feel repetitive at times. When the author moves away from psychologizing to narrative reporting, fascinating details abound, such as the choosing of actor Omar Sharif, an Egyptian non-Jew, to play opposite Streisand in Funny Girl. The outbreak of war between Egypt and Israel nearly torpedoed that casting choice.
A worthy book, particularly for readers unfamiliar with any of the full-length Streisand biographies.Pub Date: April 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-300-21091-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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