A disturbing real-life tale, made more chilling by this ill- wrought account. In 1950, Senator, at the time a mental patient, miraculously survived a prefrontal leucotomy—a crude brain operation that should have left him ``some kind of vegetable or monster.'' Thirteen years later he married Dita (her last name isn't given), a Czech woman who survived the horrors of Auschwitz. Their life together ended tragically in 1981 when Dita died of ovarian cancer. Senator, now a composer, here employs a seemingly sweet though unlikely device to tell their story: the couple ``exchange'' more than 29 letters—with Senator doing the writing for both. Unfortunately, he proves a self-important and vaguely offensive narrator. He writes: ``It was always our joke, wasn't it, darling, that you went to . . . a University of Life—or rather, of Death, at the same time that I went to Oxford. . . . That blue-black number tattooed on your arm was your graduation certificate!'' And throughout the ``correspondence,'' Senator offers little sense of Dita's personality or character beyond her ``victim'' status; he sensationalizes images of Auschwitz; and he constantly brags about his accomplishments (e.g., he writes to Dita of the premiere performance of the Holocaust Requiem he composed in her memory, ``Did you recognize your name inscribed into so many great waves of sound? . . . To tell the truth, I'm astonished at what a big social event it all turned out to be''). It's a pity, because the central story of two ``victims of [their] times'' is remarkable, and the questions they grappled with are meaningful—why they endured ordeals that destroyed many others, or how Senator's misery, indeed any suffering, can be compared with the Holocaust. That Senator concludes with a letter to Dita about his glitzy new life with his sexy new wife (whom he met just three months after Dita's death) merely heightens one's sense of having taken an unpleasant journey in bad company.
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-7145-2999-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Marion Boyars
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1996
A crash course in big-bucks tort litigation, as rich as any novel on the scene. In the mid-'70s, the small industrial town of Woburn, Mass., found itself afflicted with a plague of biblical dimensions: 12 local children, 8 of them close neighbors, had died (or were dying) of leukemia. The parents suspected the water supply, which was foul-smelling, rusty, and undrinkable, but they had no hard evidence of a link to the cancers. But in 1979, the accidental discovery of carcinogenic industrial wastes in the town's wells led the grieving parents to hire personal-injury lawyer Jan Schlichtmann, new to the profession but intoxicated with the sizable damages he'd won so far. This is magazine journalist Harr's first book, but his complex portrait of Schlichtmann is the work of a master. Egomaniacal, quixotic, workaholic, greedy, altruistic, and naive, Schlichtmann is Everylawyer, and as he allows the Woburn case to consume his practice, he almost loses his license and his life. Harr wisely downplays the dying-children angle, focusing instead on Schlichtmann's case against the two corporate Goliaths who dumped the waste: Beatrice Foods (represented by Jerome Facher of Boston's Hale & Dorr) and W.R. Grace (represented by William Cheeseman of Boston's Foley, Hoag & Eliot). Despite their white- shoe lineage, Facher and Cheeseman play dirty, withholding evidence and repeatedly seeking Schlichtmann's suspension for having filed a ``frivolous'' lawsuit. But the real villain of the story is Federal District Judge Walter J. Skinner, whose personal dislike of Schlichtmann (and camaraderie with Facher) leads him to grant the defense's motion to split the trial into two protracted phases. By the time Judge Skinner submits four incomprehensible questions to be bewildered jury, Woburn's young victims have been forgottenand the whole legal system has suffered a tragic loss. A paranoid legal thriller as readable as Grisham, but important and illuminating. (Film rights to Disney)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-394-56349-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
A generous and singularly insightful examination of memoir.
A bestselling nonfiction writer offers spirited commentary about memoir, the literary form that has become synonymous with her name.
Personal narrative has exploded in popularity over the last 20 years. Yet, as Karr (Lit: A Memoir, 2009, etc.) points out, memoir still struggles to attain literary respectability. “There is a lingering snobbery in the literary world,” she writes, “that wants to disqualify what is broadly called nonfiction from the category of ‘literature.’ ” In this book, Karr offers both an apology for and a sharp-eyed exploration of this form born from her years as a practitioner as well as a distinguished English professor at Syracuse University. She begins by considering classroom “experiments” she has conducted to show the slipperiness of memory and arguing the need to give latitude to writers tackling memoir. Writing with the intent to record what rings true rather than exact is one thing; writing with the intent to lie is another. Voice is another critical aspect of any memoir that manages to endure through time. By examining works by writers as diverse as Frank McCourt and Vladimir Nabokov, Karr demonstrates that it is in fact the very thing by which a great memoir “lives or dies.” Rather than focus on the narrative truism of “show-don’t-tell,” Karr thoughtfully elaborates on what she calls “carnality”—the ability to transform memory into a multisensory experience—for the reader. When wed to a desire to move beyond the traps of ego and render personal “psychic struggle” honestly and without fear, carnality can lead to writing that not only “wring[s] some truth from the godawful mess of a single life,” but also connects deeply with readers. Karr’s sassy Texas wit and her down-to-earth observations about both the memoir form and how to approach it combine to make for lively and inspiring reading.
A generous and singularly insightful examination of memoir.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-222306-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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