Sometimes there are pressing reasons to publish a work posthumously. But sometimes, as with this slim collection of autobiographical fragments and deeply felt pet anecdotes by a talented actress, the reasons for publication are less compelling. Although she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress early in her career (for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), as well as two Tony Awards for her work on stage (including best actress, for her role in A Thousand Clowns), Dennis's true calling was apparently as an animal lover, a role in which she displayed substantial and ceaseless talent. Piecemeal fashion, she recounts here how, over the years, she took in any number of dogs and dozens and dozens of cats, most of them strays and foundlings. Even when she was touring with a production, a few more cats would find their way to her and be added to the mÇnage. Like all true pet lovers, Dennis was endlessly tolerant as furniture, drapes, even telephones suffered the onslaught of so many capering claws. Every meal was a desperate defensive action. Water pistols worked for a time, but eventually a dog ate the pistols and Dennis was forced to give up meat: ``Even then all was not safe, as there seemed to be a growing number of vegetarian and pasta groupies among the carnivores.'' The non-pet portions of this book are almost exclusively childhood memories. Though precise and visceral, they read more like method acting memory exercises than cogent narratives. Much of this book was written while Dennis was dying of cancer, which does give the writing the strong emotional overlay of promise unfulfilled. Despite the editor's best efforts to weld these disparate fragments together, they never really cohere into anything more than a series of precious, pointillist moments. (23 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: April 27, 1997
ISBN: 1-57601-001-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
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
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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