A powerful, beautiful memoir about the deep scars of war.
The haunting memoir of a troubled Irish family irrevocably torn apart by World War II.
The ill-omened Carroll family—parents Bridie and Jim, children Mary, Noel, Ronnie and Clare, and their grandmother—arrives in London on the brink of war. Fleeing the poverty of their native Ireland, the Carrolls seem unlikely candidates for success; in particular, Jim has more charm than job qualifications. Britain’s decision to evacuate London’s children to rural locations—purportedly for their safety—is made against the advice of the experts, which proves disastrous for the Carrolls. With Jim in the army, Bridie says goodbye to her children. Unfortunately, the foster homes weren’t vetted: First, the Carroll children went to a home where the husband molested Mary. Next, the Carrolls were sent to a more appropriate home in Cornwall, but the husband was soon called into service. For their last placement, the children were separated, with Mary and Clare sent to a convent, cared for by nuns who ignored preschool-age Clare, while Noel and Ronnie were sent to the home of evil Mrs. Meally, by turns neglectful and abusive. The war over, the Carrolls sought a return to the normalcy that eluded them. Carroll shares the tragic stories of each of his siblings after the war; despite differences in their lives, each sibling battles alcoholism, brought on, Carroll argues, by their wartime experiences. Ronnie Carroll alone manages to achieve sobriety and success, which he credits to his childhood protection by Noel. While books about wartime evacuation tend to feature bucolic settings, this memoir paints an uncompromising picture of opportunistic Britons seeking the ration cards and unpaid labor of children torn from their parents. Though poignant and heartbreaking, Carroll manages to end his memoir on a strong note of optimism—undoubtedly what helped him survive his experiences. Occasionally repetitious and marred by lax editing, Carroll’s story is nonetheless nearly impossible to put down. Once finished, it’s nearly impossible to forget.
A powerful, beautiful memoir about the deep scars of war.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477123522
Page Count: 468
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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