If you’ve ever thought being in the royal family sounds like a nightmare, this book leaves no doubt.
Two members of the royal press corps give a close account of the Windsor-Markle marriage.
Though royal family members cannot authorize a biography, it’s hard to imagine a more supportive work than this. Scobie and Durand will convince readers that after what Harry and Meghan have been through at the hands of the press, the British people, and the rest of the royal family, they deserve a dose of compassion. Though there are no major bombshells, the authors add previously unknown nuances to what appeared to be a modern fairy tale. They offer details of Harry and Meghan’s first date, many of their takeout orders, who said “I love you” first, Meghan’s awkward early encounters with William and Kate, and their decision not to use a night nurse for baby Archie. Readers seeking dirt should look elsewhere. Here’s what passes for a “confession”: “To this day, Harry doesn’t like wearing a tie. He once confessed to the authors of this book, ‘We need to liven these things up, make them more fun and interesting.’ ” Some details are straight out of "Rumpelstiltskin": Meghan’s wedding veil was a “tulle-and-silk creation so delicate and of such pure white that workers had to wash their hands every thirty minutes over the five hundred hours it took to complete.” But fairy tales don’t typically end with the prince and princess turning in their resignations. What went wrong? Race and class set the stage for failure as the senselessly cruel media wrestled the couple to the mat and made sure they could not get up. “My deepest fear is history repeating itself,” Harry said in a statement not long after his son was born. “I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditized to the point that they are no longer seen or treated as a real person.” As the story ends with the beleaguered couple fleeing to Los Angeles ahead of the pandemic travel shutdown, one can only hope they have found the freedom suggested by the title.
If you’ve ever thought being in the royal family sounds like a nightmare, this book leaves no doubt.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-304610-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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 virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 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.
