This autobiography of Mlle. de Beauvoir up to the age of twenty-one is every bit as fascinating as a de Beauvoir novel, largely because she is as absorbed in herself here as a novelist is in his hero and in the same way. From her birth in 1908, through her childhood in a fairly well-to-do middle class family, through her adolescent insecurity, her loss of faith, the beginning of the drive for independence from her family, her decision to become a writer and a philosopher, her years at the Sorbonne, her discovery of the Cult of Restlessness with its consequences for her of loneliness, pride and dedication, to her final year of study, bringing her a sense of direction and purpose,— all is told with a drive and a feeling of personality that is most compelling. There are, in addition, good portraits of several members of her family, of her closest friend Zaza Mabille, of her cousin Jacques with whom she was in love, and of various fellow students at the Sorbonne including Jean-Paul Sartre. Though she passed through many stages that every sensitive and intelligent girl growing up experiences, most of it seems new because of her vitality and her intellectual curiosity. Her novelist's hand is most clearly seen in her self-editing— in spite of writing about herself in great detail, no incidents or people are presented for their own sakes alone but always as a means of furthering the book as a whole. It is a stimulating story of the birth of an existentialist and the coming of age of an extraordinary young woman. Highly recommended.
Pub Date: June 18, 1959
ISBN: 0060825197
Page Count: 386
Publisher: World
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1959
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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