An exciting look at London’s queer history and a tribute to the “various human worlds maintained in [the city’s] diversity...
A history of the development of London as the European epicenter of queer life.
In his latest work, Ackroyd (Revolution: The History of England from the Battle of the Boyne to the Battle of Waterloo, 2017, etc.), who has written numerous books about his home city, dives into a specific aspect of that history. The author begins with linguistics. In trying to sort out the origins of the words “gay” and “lesbian,” Ackroyd launches into an etymological exploration of a variety of words associated with homosexuality. In his opinion, the term “gay,” as we understand it now, took on its meaning in the 1940s in the United States. For decades and even centuries before then, homosexuality had a very different meaning in the U.K. Ackroyd describes the varied practices of the wealthy and powerful through the ages: sleeping with young boys with no consequences and a blind eye from the general public; an intricate linguistic and hand-motion code that only the “queers” could understand; the long and often overlooked tradition of cross-dressing to gain social advantages; and the ebb and flow of acceptance of same-sex marriages. The author also takes us through the many obstacles put in place to battle against homosexuality, though he describes a period in 16th-century London during which the effeminacy of men was celebrated (privately) and used publically in theatrical gestures and contributions to the cultural capital of the community. Spanning centuries, the book is a fantastically researched project that is obviously close to the author’s heart. Rather than obsessively writing about the heterosexual perception of homosexual lifestyles, Ackroyd provides tangible anecdotes from members of the community, all with a light and engaging tone that will make most readers continue until the end—only to discover that not much has changed.
An exciting look at London’s queer history and a tribute to the “various human worlds maintained in [the city’s] diversity despite persecution, condemnation, and affliction.”Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3099-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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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