Exemplary literary scholarship.
An authoritative life of a towering poet.
After completing a two-volume biography (Young Eliot, 2015), Crawford continues his meticulous, perceptive examination of the life and work of T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) beginning with the 1922 publication of The Waste Land. Drawing on voluminous letters and archival sources, he constructs a finely detailed chronicle of the poet’s last four decades, focusing on how Eliot’s work—poetry, plays, essays—arose from his “sometimes tormented life.” Much of that torment was caused by his marriage to the volatile Vivien Haigh-Wood, whose physical and mental deterioration—recounted in sometimes tedious detail—vexed both of them. Although overwhelmed with Vivien’s problems, Eliot found sustenance in his relationship with Emily Hale, whom he had met in 1912 and professed to be in love with. Their correspondence, made public in 2020, reveals an intimate friendship. Hale was Eliot’s confidante, and she longed to marry him if only he would divorce Vivien. For Eliot, though, a convert to the Anglican Church, divorce was forbidden. When Vivien died in 1947, Emily’s hope revived, but “it was as if Vivien’s death pointed him all the more definitely towards renunciation.” Suddenly, he realized that “his love for Emily now was so different from what he had felt in his youth.” Marriage, he explained to her, was impossible. Crawford examines Eliot’s “bleak private life,” which became exacerbated by the deaths of family and friends—and even by winning the Nobel Prize, which he feared would quash his creativity. “The Nobel is a ticket to one’s funeral,” he complained. Despite travels, teaching, honors, and lectures; despite his work as an editor at Faber & Faber; despite an active social life, Eliot appeared deeply solitary and withdrawn. “In public,” Crawford writes, “his carapace remained impermeable.” Marriage to his young secretary Valerie Fletcher, in 1957, which surprised everyone who knew him, seemed to rejuvenate him. Eight years later, he was dead.
Exemplary literary scholarship.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-27946-2
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
At-times inspirational memoir about a journalist’s battle with a grave disease she had to face while also dealing with her...
With the assistance of Chambers (co-author; Yes, Chef, 2012, etc.), broadcaster Roberts (From the Heart: Eight Rules to Live By, 2008) chronicles her struggles with myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare condition that affects blood and bone marrow.
The author is a well-known newscaster, formerly on SportsCenter and now one of the anchors of Good Morning America. In 2007, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she successfully fought with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Five years later, after returning from her news assignment covering the 2012 Academy Awards, she learned that chemotherapy had resulted in her developing MDS, which led to an acute form of leukemia. Without a bone marrow transplant, her projected life expectancy was two years. While Roberts searched for a compatible donor and prepared for the transplant, her aging mother’s health also began to gravely deteriorate. Roberts faced her misfortune with an athlete’s mentality, showing strength against both her disease and the loss of her mother. This is reflected in her narration, which rarely veers toward melodrama or self-pity. Even in the chapters describing the transplantion process and its immediate aftermath, which make for the most intimate parts of the book, Roberts maintains her positivity. However, despite the author’s best efforts to communicate the challenges of her experience and inspire empathy, readers are constantly reminded of her celebrity status and, as a result, are always kept at arm's length. The sections involving Roberts’ family partly counter this problem, since it is in these scenes that she becomes any daughter, any sister, any lover, struggling with a life-threatening disease. “[I]f there’s one thing that spending a year fighting for your life against a rare and insidious…disease will teach you,” she writes, “it’s that time is not to be wasted.”
At-times inspirational memoir about a journalist’s battle with a grave disease she had to face while also dealing with her mother’s passing.Pub Date: April 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4555-7845-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
A stunning memoir about discovering one’s identity late in life.
A transgender man comes to terms with his identity.
Born into a wealthy English family, Radclyffe began life as a girl in denial about her crushes on other women. After coming out as gay, the author visited the Bluestockings bookstore in New York City, a short train ride from the Connecticut home where Radclyffe was masquerading as a housewife despite suffering from hair and weight loss and random moments of pain associated with gender dysphoria. At Bluestockings, the author met and began dating a woman. When they slept together, Radclyffe imagined having a phantom penis, which, in retrospect, he recognized as a possible sign that he was transgender. However, only after getting a divorce and falling in love with another woman did he come out as a man. Although his relationship didn’t survive his transition, Radclyffe found acceptance among his chosen family, his parents, and his children. Perhaps most importantly, he discovered self-acceptance and learned that his identity didn’t negate his ability to be a loving and effective parent. “The world had tried to tell me that I couldn’t care for myself,” he writes, “and also for my children, that I couldn’t be trans and queer and be a source of stability.…Whatever my failings as a parent—and I knew there had been many—my children would walk out into the world armed with all the tools I’d once lacked: courage, curiosity, the confidence to form their own opinions and trust their own instincts.” This book is consistently frank, vulnerable, perspicacious, and insightful, covering an impressive variety of aspects of the transgender experience in intimate, lyrical language and dry, compassionate humor. The author’s analysis of privilege is particularly refreshing, as is his description of transitioning as a parent.
A stunning memoir about discovering one’s identity late in life.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780802163158
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Roxane Gay Books/Grove
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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