A great read for Boleyn fans and fanatics alike, though not for readers seeking a general biography of the queen.
A dissection of the many varying portrayals of Anne Boleyn (1501–1536) since her death.
Bordo (Humanities/Univ. of Kentucky; The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private, 1999, etc.) begins her study of Boleyn through the ages with the attempted eradication of the doomed queen’s presence from Henry VIII’s castle and life. It was with this erasure, writes the author, that Boleyn ceased to exist as a person and became a character known only through the lenses of others. The chief contemporary accounts of her time at court come from a diplomat and supporter of Boleyn’s predecessor, Katherine of Aragon. The portrait is that of a villain, which Bordo thinks is unfair and probably historically inaccurate due to the biases of the sources. The author examines many of the histories and fictions that make Boleyn their subject, from early biographies to novels, plays and TV shows. While she makes a compelling case for her assertion that Boleyn was a strong and independent victim of the times rather than a bloodthirsty and power-mad vixen, Bordo’s own biases are apparent. She portrays the former queen not as simply misunderstood but as a feminist hero for the ages. The angle won’t surprise those familiar with her other works, but occasionally the book feels less like history than sociological theory. While the obvious discontent with many Boleyn accounts is a main focus of the book, one consequence of all the attention given those works is the likelihood that readers who are not well-versed in the lore will become curious about all the stories, including the negative.
A great read for Boleyn fans and fanatics alike, though not for readers seeking a general biography of the queen.Pub Date: April 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-32818-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he...
The latest from French writer/filmmaker Carrère (My Life as a Russian Novel, 2010, etc.) is an awkward but intermittently touching hybrid of novel and autobiography.
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he describes powerfully. Carrère and his partner, Hélène, then return to Paris—and do so with a mutual devotion that's been renewed and deepened by all they've witnessed. Back in France, Hélène's sister Juliette, a magistrate and mother of three small daughters, has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that crippled her in adolescence. After her death, Carrère decides to write an oblique tribute and an investigation into the ravages of grief. He focuses first on Juliette's colleague and intimate friend Étienne, himself an amputee and survivor of childhood cancer, and a man in whose talkativeness and strength Carrère sees parallels to himself ("He liked to talk about himself. It's my way, he said, of talking to and about others, and he remarked astutely that it was my way, too”). Étienne is a perceptive, dignified person and a loyal, loving friend, and Carrère's portrait of him—including an unexpectedly fascinating foray into Étienne and Juliette's chief professional accomplishment, which was to tap the new European courts for help in overturning longtime French precedents that advantaged credit-card companies over small borrowers—is impressive. Less successful is Carrère's account of Juliette's widower, Patrice, an unworldly cartoonist whom he admires for his fortitude but seems to consider something of a simpleton. Now and again, especially in the Étienne sections, Carrère's meditations pay off in fresh, pungent insights, and his account of Juliette's last days and of the aftermath (especially for her daughters) is quietly harrowing.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9261-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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