![THE HOUSE OF GUCCI [MOVIE TIE-IN]](https://d1fd687oe6a92y.cloudfront.net/img/user-media/titles/title/cover/2a9a6a7f3b3c48619d5e9bce2c53b302/9780063159983.jpg.300x0_q85_autocrop.webp)
An epic story told in epic detail.
As the Gucci saga heads to the big screen with a dream-team cast, the opus that inspired it, originally published in 2000, is reissued and updated.
Forden begins with a riveting description of the 1995 execution-style shooting of Maurizio Gucci, as witnessed by the doorman of his building. It's an apt opener given the subtitle. About half of what follows lives up to that billing, and surely it is that half we will see in Ridley Scott's upcoming film. The other half might be called "A True Story of Boardrooms, Lawyers, Negotiations, and Handbag Manufacturing." Forden presents the decades of poor business decisions made by the family—as one lawyer put it, "We have to save Gucci from the Guccis!"—in meticulous detail. The author, a former Milan bureau chief for Women's Wear Daily, does her best to bring the boardroom and banking scenes to life. She also gives a thorough account of the fashion side of the story, from the construction of the iconic bamboo-handle bag to the runway sensations of the "Tom and Dom" era (designer Tom Ford and CEO Domenico De Sole), which included a Gucci G-string. Perhaps the most outrageous of the many larger-than-life characters is Patrizia Reggiani (played by Lady Gaga in the film), a shameless gold digger who announced she would rather “weep in a Rolls-Royce than be happy on a bicycle” and blithely ordered the murder of her husband when their interests diverged. As her own lawyer put it, “This story makes a Greek tragedy look like a children’s story." According to Forden, "the trial spotlighted the passionate, excessive lives of Maurizio and Patrizia in stark contrast to the gray squalor in which Pina and her three accomplices lived. And like the O.J. Simpson trial, which underscored divisive racial attitudes in American society, the Gucci trial highlighted the chasm separating wealthy from poor in Italy."
An epic story told in epic detail.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-315998-3
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Custom House/Morrow
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
