While it delivers an enticing glimpse of the past and the afterlife, this account becomes convoluted at times.
A semiautobiographical work explores one woman’s ancestors and Russian history.
As Elmanovich (In Eternity, 2015, etc.) asserts at the outset, the pages that follow are based on recordings of her conversations with ghosts. The author, born to a Russian family living in Estonia, settled in the United States at the age of 55. Now in her 80s, she is a medium able to “hear voices of spirits and angels.” The specters in this collection tend to be deceased family members, some of whom Elmanovich never met while they were living. All have a connection to Russia and Estonia. There is the author’s Aunt Tatyana, who died at 11 and explains the reasons for her death. Elmanovich’s Uncle Jurik speaks from beyond the grave about the World War II siege of Leningrad. Her maternal grandmother, Anna, with the aid of a spirit helper named Hildegard, explains the circumstances of a horrendous marriage. The ghosts do not merely speak of the earthly realm. They have much to say about the “4D astral world” and some of it is surprising. For instance, cocaine is used by some in the afterlife to alleviate their woes. As one user explains, “Narcotics lift me to another vibration for a while.” An afterlife pregnancy even proves to be a possibility. Throughout the book, there are also bits and pieces of the author’s own life. She is a former film critic whose decades of experience have taught her that all people are flawed. As she explained to her brother, “Ideal people do not exist in reality.” Elmanovich’s ambitious work covers a wide range of material in a fairly small amount of pages. A family history of the Bolshevik Revolution, existence in an astral world, and the difficulties of coming to America are captivating topics that could each fill a volume. The variety of intriguing subjects provides much to take in, though the interweaving can be clumsy. No sooner are readers told of the terror brought upon civilians by Kronstadt sailors in revolutionary Russia than shortly thereafter they learn of a Korean War veteran named Jose Martinez, a clairvoyant who died before his 60th birthday of a drug overdose. And though the many pieces are sometimes jumbled or wild (astral world narcotics?), the book presents a number of potent points even for the skeptical. For example, discussing the horrors of Leningrad is no simple matter for a spirit like Jurik. The work explains how survivors know that their words will “never reach their listeners’ mind and emotions completely” because those without direct experience cannot fully appreciate what happened. Nevertheless, Jurik’s tales still have much to tell the audience. Similarly, readers may want to know more of the author’s story. Her abilities as a medium are stated as matter-of-factly as her arrival in America. But what does it fully mean to be a medium? When and how did she know she had this ability? The book ultimately covers a multitude of topics yet it leaves a host of unanswered questions.
While it delivers an enticing glimpse of the past and the afterlife, this account becomes convoluted at times.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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