A nostalgic recollection of the great beauty's movies and memories.
The award-winning actress and international sex symbol tells her life story, from her childhood in Naples, Italy, to her rise to the top of the Hollywood A-list.
In this occasionally revealing memoir, Loren (Sophia Loren's Recipes and Memories, 1998, etc.) opens her "treasure trove of memories.” She is amusing and engaging when discussing her teenage ambition to be a star. She participated in beauty pageants (in one, she earned a "Miss Eleganza" sash) and became a popular model in Italian "photo-romance" novels before beginning her career as a movie actress. However, when she chronicles her relationship with Italian film producer Carlo Ponti—who brought her to the United States and helped make her an international star—Loren’s directness evaporates and the narrative falters. She describes Ponti as "a determined businessman" and an “authoritative gentleman,” but she gives only glancing acknowledgement of his wife and two small children—not to mention the fact that he was 39 and she was only 17 when their affair began. (To modern ears, the charges Ponti's family later brought against the couple for "bigamy and concubinage" will seem archaic.) Along with her blithe dismissal of inconvenient facts, Loren repeatedly describes herself as a shy woman of high moral character; as proof, she haughtily reveals the story behind the infamous photo of her staring at Jayne Mansfield's deep neckline at a Hollywood party in 1957—Loren claims she was scandalized and "terrified" because "one of her breasts [was] in my plate.” Throughout, Loren earnestly tells her many stories in the sentimental and often amused voice of "Nonna Sofia,” though without much scrutiny or a sharp wit. A short appendix lists each of the author’s acting roles by year.
A nostalgic recollection of the great beauty's movies and memories.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1476797427
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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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