A sumptuous literary biography.
Revealing portrait of the noted—and notorious—writer, viewed through the prism of the books that educated, inspired and comforted him.
From birth, Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was awash in words. His Anglo-Irish parents recounted aloud local tales, classic literature and their own work (Sir William was a pioneering folklorist, Lady Wilde “a famous poetess”), fostering both an early aptitude and undying love for language, writing and books. Wilde thrilled at collecting and devouring a variety of volumes; each added to his prodigious intellect as well as to a store of ideas that contributed to many a lush oration. His years at Oxford were marked by extravagant academic accomplishments, particularly in the classics he had loved since childhood, and by symposiums hosted with Socratic gusto in his school quarters. As an adult of growing notoriety, Wilde found sustenance, inspiration and solace in his prized library; he regarded the carefully collected books as both “a record of his life and as an emblem of his personality.” Wilde scholar Wright (editor: Oscar Wilde’s Table Talk, 2001), who spent 20 years reading this library, allows his own prose to convey his subject’s literary duality—excess and allusion. “Hubris had provoked the wrath of the Gods, and Doom entered the stage with running feet,” he writes of the guilty verdict in the infamous Queensbury trial, referring to the Greek tragedies that provided so much joy to Wilde the reader but also inescapably pervaded his life. In general, the author suggests, Wilde enjoyed “the pleasant confusion of life and art”—until his prison sentence forced him to become an actual tragic hero. At the start of his incarceration, all of his belongings, including his entire library, were sold at public auction to settle his debts. An “inconsolable” Wilde suffered the losses behind bars; he would never fully recover. The author accents this remarkable account with pages of Wilde’s reading lists, reproductions of annotated books and an index of referenced authors.
A sumptuous literary biography.Pub Date: May 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8993-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: John Macrae/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
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
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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