An affecting recollection of a memorable marriage.
A woman recalls her life—never dull and sometimes terrifying—as an Air Force wife in this memoir.
When Giere married Bernie, the uncertainty of their lives presented itself as a source of adventure rather than anxiety: “We were so much in love that we never questioned what the future would bring.” But Bernie, an Air Force pilot, was eventually sent to Vietnam with the 557th Squadron, a separation that weighed heavily on the author, only 25 years old at the time. She was responsible for tending to their young daughter and preparing for the arrival of another child. Giere did her best to manage her fears—she played bridge, joined a Bible study group, prayed—but nevertheless remained scared her husband, like so many other pilots, would not return. The author movingly depicts her predicament, which became intensely real to her when she learned another Air Force wife lost her husband in Vietnam: “After that the vulnerability of a pilot’s life became a reality that helped define my role in this new war experience. My friends from the past, who carried on their civilian lives as if there were no Vietnam, seemed disconnected, foreign.” Giere poignantly chronicles her eventful marriage, including the years following Bernie’s deployment to Vietnam and his struggle with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Still, her husband’s stretch of time overseas forms the dramatic backbone of the memoir. The author charmingly strikes an informal register, an anecdotal casualness that forges an even greater intimacy with readers in this admirably candid remembrance. And while of course she did not serve in Vietnam herself, she relates Bernie’s experiences, through conversations and letters, so vividly that readers receive a captivating peek into a soldier’s life there. This is an endearing reminiscence, a kind of love letter from the author to her husband, both sweet and wise.
An affecting recollection of a memorable marriage.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-944653-20-0
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Imzadi Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 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
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