As Ellis shows in this charming, gracefully written memoir, literary heroines revealed to her new life stories, new selves...
A literary journey to self-discovery.
Growing up in London in a family of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, playwright Ellis (Cling to Me Like Ivy, 2010) looked for models of courage and adventure and, she hoped, an escape from the future her parents planned for her: marriage to an Iraqi-Jewish man, children and a well-kept home. In this autobiography of reading, the author recalls the fictional characters she saw as heroines, including Anne of Green Gables; strong-willed Scarlett O’Hara; the elegant Anne Welles of Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls; and the consummate storyteller, Scheherazade. Louisa May Alcott’s Jo March “was fabulously rebellious” but disappointed Ellis when she married a German professor and gave up writing to run a school. At 12, Ellis loved Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet “for her muddy petticoats, her irreverence and her big heart. But mostly I loved her defiance of convention.” Until she switched her allegiance to brave, clever Jane Eyre, passionate Cathy Earnshaw, of Wuthering Heights, was the heroine she wanted most to emulate. “Back then,” Ellis writes, “I wanted my heroines to show me new ways to be, like heedless, selfish Cathy.” As a college student, she found a kindred spirit in Sylvia Plath and her protagonist, Esther Greenwood, of The Bell Jar. Dressing in black, wearing heavy eyeliner, Ellis decided to go to Cambridge, “where Plath’s poetry took off, and where she met Ted Hughes.” From Lucy Honeychurch, in E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View, she got “the idea of becoming an artist and living an artist’s life. It was because of her that I started writing plays.” Her first was inspired by Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in which she identified with the angry Martha.
As Ellis shows in this charming, gracefully written memoir, literary heroines revealed to her new life stories, new selves and her own power to invent her life.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1101872093
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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