At first, the book is less a biography and more a society report of England’s upper class, but it evolves into an exciting,...
The Kennedys all kept journals, and Byrne (Belle: The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice, 2014, etc.) uses them to the fullest in this biography of Kathleen, aka Kick (1920-1948).
In the first half of the book, the author relies heavily on those journals, and the narrative occasionally gets bogged down in Kick’s lists of people she met, what she wore, and where she went. Thankfully for readers, she met the most famous people, wore the most beautiful clothes, and went to all the best parties. Byrne highlights the importance of Kick’s close attachment and similar character to her brother, Jack, nearest to her in age. Her father, Joseph, was named ambassador to the Court of St. James, mostly to get him out of Franklin Roosevelt’s hair. He and his family were loved and celebrated all over England, and the English men adored Kick. She encouraged them all without any intention of forming a deeper relationship—until she met Billy Cavendish, heir to the dukedom of Devonshire, which included Chatsworth and castles in Ireland, Scotland, Yorkshire, and Sussex. Joe Kennedy’s statement that the British Empire was at an end and could never withstand Hitler put an end to his ambassadorship as well as his career. The story gets most interesting as Kick and Billy fall in love and face their insurmountable religious differences. The original Duke of Devonshire set the familial pattern of hatred of Catholics. The author follows the war years in which the couple searched for loopholes. She could never give up her faith, and Billy had the responsibility of many Church of England parish benefices. The story is heartrending as Kick returns to the U.S., Billy gets engaged to another, and the war rages on.
At first, the book is less a biography and more a society report of England’s upper class, but it evolves into an exciting, heartbreakingly tense love story.Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-229627-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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