In the latest addition to the poor-little-rich-girl bookshelf, tobacco heiress and Imelda Marcos-pal Doris Duke is portrayed by Washington Post reporter Mansfield as tightfisted, eccentric, and aimless. Duke was 12 when, in 1925, her father died and she inherited his vast fortune. An awkward teenager, she wore hand-me-downs from her mother and was said never to carry money. Her first husband, Jimmy Cromwell, was a charming fortune hunter with political ambitions; on their round-the-world honeymoon, his first check bounced, and from then on the pair lived on Duke's money. A stop in Hawaii led Duke to build a house there (she also had estates in Newport and New Jersey). When she and Cromwell split, WW II was on and Doris joined the United Seaman's Service and went abroad to serve in Cairo; before long, she had joined the OSS in Italy. She married legendary lover Porfiro Rubirosa and, after their divorce, hung out with jazz musicians and surrounded herself with psychics and faith healers. Duke shopped constantly (for instance, buying whole temples in Thailand and having them shipped back to the States) while astonishing her servants with her cheapness. Chandi Heffner, a Hare Krishna devotee, moved in with her in the mid-80's; Duke adopted this young woman, reputed to be her lover, only to evict her unapologetically opportunist ``daughter'' sometime after the pair became close to Marcos, then living in Hawaii. So Duke apparently sought fulfillment, bought lovers, and achieved little. Mansfield has amassed voluminous research, and there's a voyeuristic charge to following the spoiled whims of this notoriously reclusive heiress; and yet a seemingly petty, controlling woman without humor or flare makes for an unexciting biography.
Pub Date: June 8, 1992
ISBN: 0-399-13672-X
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
Poetic, inspiring proof that you can go home again.
Ten homespun personal essays—most published elsewhere—from the author of last year’s acclaimed novel Jim the Boy.
Earley grew up in a small-town, kudzu-covered corner of North Carolina more recognizable as the terrain of Thomas Wolfe than that of Dorothy Allison. Seven of these pieces explore his early years there, as a 1960s television acolyte, a squirrel-hunting dilettante, and, through it all, an astute, heartbreaking observer of the idiosyncratic people around him. The title story, which appeared in Harper’s, serves as an introduction to this American boyhood, wholly transformed by a color, Zenith television set, replete with rooftop antenna. As the cornerstone entry here, a masterful exercise in metaphor, it’s hard to imagine what more the author could have to articulate about his young life. But Earley thankfully only has more trenchant memories to spin. With “Hallway,” in an equally unadorned language, but with more deeply felt remembrances, Earley recalls, with a child’s perception, his extended family’s peculiarities and his own fearful awe of his grandfather. A look at the odd Scots-derived Appalachian dialect of his youth (“The Quare Gene”) leads to a reflection on the “shared history” that the author is losing with his highland ancestors. A similar wistfulness pervades “Granny’s Bridge,” a tribute to a time when crossing a bridge—and certainly not one to the 21st century—could enhance a person’s outlook. In “Ghost Stories,” Earley takes his wife to New Orleans to investigate the haunted city: “We are looking for ghosts, but, I think, a good story will do.” And the final piece (“Tour de Fax”), another gem from Harper’s, follows him on a record-setting circumnavigational flight, recorded stop by stop in under 32 hours. Earley’s skewering of the trip’s corporate sponsors is good fun, and his capstone epiphany—that where he ended up, at home, is the only place he’d fly around the world to get to—rings true.
Poetic, inspiring proof that you can go home again.Pub Date: May 25, 2001
ISBN: 1-56512-302-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
Peter Mayle fans who haven’t yet had enough of Provence knockoffs will enjoy Drinkwater’s genteel tale, as well as James...
The memoirs of actress and author Drinkwater (Molly on the Run, 1996), best known for her role as Helen Herriot in the 1980s TV series All Creatures Great and Small.
Although the author plays down the importance of her life as an actress, it was through acting that she met her husband, Michel, a film producer. Leaving behind the tinsel of Cannes, the two wandered the back roads of southern France and found an abandoned villa attached to ten acres of old olive trees. The bucolic setting and the vision of themselves as custodians of the land led them to purchase the villa in one fell swoop, but real day-to-day life on the farm proved resistant to their romantic visions. The house hadn’t been lived in for years; simply establishing water and electricity service turned out to be a major job. Refurbishing an old swimming pool was an even more expensive (some might say prodigal) effort. In spite of her successful acting career, and her husband’s ongoing film projects, financial woes soon presented themselves—at least until money flowed in from one of the author’s residuals checks or Michel signed a new contract. Eventually the problems were solved and the grove was producing the finest olive oil in the region, mainly because of the Drinkwaters’ hard work, but even more because of their ability to hire the right people to help out—such as René (who knew just about everything there was to know about olives) and Quashia (an itinerant Algerian with a tragic past). In the end, not surprisingly, the story seems rather like a movie.
Peter Mayle fans who haven’t yet had enough of Provence knockoffs will enjoy Drinkwater’s genteel tale, as well as James Herriot groupies.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-58567-106-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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