A pedantic, tedious hardcover debut in which Grimes (the paperback Almost Perfect) presents an imaginary journal kept by Martha Jefferson, beloved wife of Thomas, during the passionate but tragically few years of their marriage. Thomas and Patty (as Martha was known to her family) have eyes only for each other from their first meeting in October 1770, but although a 21-year-old widow with a young son, Patty is determined never to marry again, so shattered was she by her husband's preference for his slave mistress over her. The courtship proceeds in spite of her resolve, however, and eventually Thomas's love and respect for her overcome her objections. Married New Year's Day, 1772, they move to cramped temporary lodgings while Monticello is being painstakingly built, and begin to raise a family. The issue of slave emancipation becomes a frequent theme through the years as naive Patty learns the bitter realities of the black experience from her temperamental but trusted handmaid, Betty, who was her late father's concubine and bore him many children (though she despised him for keeping her from her husband). Meanwhile, the political situation in Virginia and the Colonies takes Thomas away from Patty for long periods, and the pain of each parting is recorded faithfully, along with many details of the war for American independence. Not surprisingly, the births, stillbirths, and deaths of their children figure prominently also, as do countless instances of Patty's liver-fevers and other ailments, which kept her husband increasingly by her side until she died in 1782—an event that left him bereft of his senses for a time, but that finally allowed him to return to the political sphere he loved with a similar intensity. Historically accurate and sincere—but also a redundant, overly precious patchwork of a courageous woman's private thoughts and the colorful American life swirling around her.
Pub Date: Jan. 20, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-42399-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
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
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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