it haunting.
An ingenious, outsize myth-meets-facts "life and works" of the charismatic global citizen and compulsive tale-teller.
Prizewinning political novelist Shakespeare (The Dancer Upstairs, 1997, etc.) carefully situates Chatwin (1940–88) in each milieu where he sought, then outgrew, mentors: boarding school, Sotheby's, archaeological digs, the London Sunday Times, world capitals' gay subworlds. An active if conflicted bisexual, he mesmerized relatives, friends, colleagues, lovers, and critics, who turn up here to voice every shade of judgment concerning his marathon monologues ("Bruce on form could be the song the sirens sang"—unless "he murdered people with talk"), his "ascetic de luxe" style of writing and living, his overdrive curiosity. (He could have claimed as his credo "I need desperately to know certain things.") The incremental portrait of Elizabeth Chanler proves that finding this resilient, independent, dedicated American was Chatwin's "greatest luck": Whatever his wildest forays, their 23-year marriage remained his ultimate refuge. Shakespeare tracks the restless wanderer as he scavenges the world for experience he encapsulated in dazzling verbal edifices that defy classification. In Patagonia (1978), the most legendary travel book of its time, revived that region of Argentina; The Songlines (1987) appropriated and enlarged upon aboriginal cosmology. A thirst for the marvelous pursued Chatwin to the last. Records confirm he died riddled by a rare South Asian fungus fostered by the AIDS he never admitted to, which elevated him to baroque hallucinations and hypomania before his death at 48. Though impressed by the man's unfettered brilliance, Shakespeare evenhandedly displays every persona constituting "The Chatwin Effect," from solipsistic na‹f to literary wonder-worker, mountebank sponger to golden-haired Prometheus. This spirited tell-all will make newcomers yearn to try his books. An unflinching reconstruction of a singular writer's scorching trajectory through life: Speed makes it concise; fate makes
it haunting. (Family tree, photos, not seen) (Author tour)Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-49829-2
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
An absorbing biography that will help Stead's fans place her fiction in the context of her life and may well attract new readers to her work. Christina Stead (190283), who was born and died in Australia (about which, writes Rowley, she was ``both nostalgic and patronising''), did her writing during her years in Europe and the US. Although she tapped real events and people for her fiction—and not just for her autobiographical novels, including the superb The Man Who Loved Children—she could be secretive in her private papers, identifying people by fictional names, writing in code, and ultimately destroying many documents. Despite this obstacle, Rowley (an Australian academic, currently a visiting scholar at Columbia University) offers a coherent and convincing portrait that reaches back into a youth in which Stead was overshadowed by her father, who first instilled in her a lifelong socialist orientation, insecurity about her appearance (he dubbed her ``Pig Face''), and a yearning to be adored by a man. When she arrived in London in 1928, Stead found just the man—William Blake (originally Blech), whom Rowley succinctly describes as a ``Marxist investments manager who seemed to know something about everything.'' Blake hired her to be his secretary, and Stead accompanied him to Paris, where their romance flourished—despite a wife who would not divorce Blake for 23 years. When the bank employing Blake collapsed, the pair fled to New York. Stead's writings earned only modest royalties even when favorably reviewed, and Blake could not find work, so they returned to Europe in a consistently difficult hunt for economic security that gave their lives a nomadic flavor. By 1949, Stead said to a friend, ``I have been a writer, quite unsuccessfully for twenty years,'' although a revival of interest in her work, which began in the mid-1960s, helped her return to Australia in 1969 as a famous author and ``Official Personage.'' A welcome study of an underrated author. (16 pages of photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-3411-0
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
Full of interesting factoids–-but the blatant advertising for Kushner's products is pervasive to the point the book becomes...
A wake-up call about caffeine from a committed and self-interested author.
Formerly a newspaper journalist in Russia who consumed enormous amounts of coffee and cigarettes, Kushner relocated to New York City during the early '90s. Shortly thereafter, she learned she suffered from Celiac disease, a genetic disorder that was perhaps exacerbated by products containing caffeine. She researched caffeine substitutes, none of them suiting her tastes. And she discovered that certain substitutes contain gluten, another substance that those with Celiac cannot tolerate. Thus, she "invented" soy coffee and uses this book as her marketing platform. It's frequently informative, though, once the the text moves beyond pure publicity. For instance, she mentions that England's King Charles II attempted to shutter coffeehouses in 1675 because men tended to neglect their families while staying out to consume caffeine. Widespread protest, though, defeated the ban; the Boston Tea Party of 1773 resulted in the consumption of coffee as a patriotic duty; the world's first espresso machine began making noise in France in 1882; Maxwell House coffee is named after a Nashville hotel; US coffee sales boomed during the 1920s thanks to Prohibition; the US imported 70 percent of the world’s coffee crop at the beginning of WWII; Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle in 1971. These are just a few pieces of coffee trivia the author offers. She also briefly discusses the history of the American addiction to caffeine, explaining the chemistry of the substance, listing specific health threats (heart disease, central-nervous-system disorders, ulcers, cancer) and mapping out specific routes to end dependency. Unfortunately, though, the style interferes with the substance, as the tone is often shrill and alarmist. An appendix titled "Make a Difference!" is the call to action here, urging readers to petition the FDA for fuller disclosure among coffee manufacturers of specific product caffeine levels.
Full of interesting factoids–-but the blatant advertising for Kushner's products is pervasive to the point the book becomes soporific.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-9747582-0-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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