A fresh and instructive investigation of three iconic lives and minds.
What were Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and Joan of Arc thinking and feeling during their hours of deepest crisis and despair?
Shorr (Backlands, 2015), who co-founded the Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles, combines sturdy biographical research with some flights of imagination to portray three different women caught in the vises of three very different sets of circumstances. Austen (1775-1817), Shelley (1797-1851), and Joan of Arc (1412-1431)—each faced considerable darkness but persisted until light appeared. Austen found herself growing older with no marriage prospects and “without a penny to her name”—then picked up her pen; Shelley had to deal with the deaths of three of her children and a husband (poet Percy Bysshe Shelley) whose eye roamed before he drowned, leaving Mary widowed at 25; Joan, after winning battles for France, was captured and knew a flaming death at the stake would be her fate. In all three stories, Shorr employs a similar strategy, interweaving historical and biographical facts with imagined actions, thoughts, and dialogue. She is not explicit about the connections among the women’s lives; she does not point out, for instance, that neither Percy Shelley’s nor Joan’s heart burned in the flames that consumed their bodies: Shelley’s, a cremation on the beach at Viareggio; Joan’s, a fiery execution in Rouen. Regardless, the author’s voyages into the minds of the women are impressive. Joan battles with another “Joan,” whom the author calls “Girl X,” a timorous version of herself who wants only to live. Mary comes to terms with her husband’s infatuations with other women, deciding each is more muse than potential lover. Jane realizes that her work, “that spark she’d trusted, had caught fire, and lit her life.” The detail is a little thick in the Mary section, and the text is a little long in Joan’s.
A fresh and instructive investigation of three iconic lives and minds.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-393-65278-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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