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EVE

A BIOGRAPHY

Eve, the “mother of all living,” has taken the flak for the woes of man- and womankind for millennia, and only now is her image being revamped, as recounted in this wide-ranging overview of stories from before Genesis to contemporary feminist thought. Norris, who edited an anthology of Victorian women poets and other volumes, begins by examining the actual texts of the biblical stories of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where and why they might have originated (to warn against pagan goddesses often associated with serpents?). Although, as Norris explains, Eve “sinks from view” after the first few chapters of the Hebrew Bible, her story is kept alive in centuries of interpretive writing, mostly negative, from Jewish and later Christian theologians. The observation “Sin began with a woman and thanks to her we all must die” sets the tone for commentaries in general; lust and sexual decadence were added to women’s guilt by the early Christian fathers. Hopscotching among the Greeks to examine woman’s role as troublemaker, “helpmeet,” and destroyer, as well as early Christian ascetics, who sought personal freedom by committing themselves to God and good works, Norris also examines “the Second Eve,” the Virgin Mary, whose obedience to God contrasted with Eve’s defiance in eating the apple. The role of the serpent, sometimes seen as another face of Eve, is enlivened with terrifying ancient myths. Poets, artists and modern writers from Milton, George Eliot, Hawthorne, and Calvin to Hemingway and Daphne du Maurier are recruited to illuminate Eve in all her aspects, including temptress, sinner, and servant. Modern women, suggests Norris, can look to the Eve legend more positively: as a “need to challenge boundaries, to make the imaginative leap . . . into a new phase of existence.” With a balance of humor and feminist irony, Norris links fact and fiction, myth and history to provide a sometimes chaotic but often edifying story of the First Mother. (41 b&w, 12 color illustrations, not seen)

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1999

ISBN: 0-8147-5812-6

Page Count: 496

Publisher: New York Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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