These seven journals of Woolf (1882-1943), begun when she was almost 15 and spanning 12 years, cover her life at home as well as trips to various parts of Great Britain and to Greece and Italy. As Leaska (Communication Arts/N.Y.U.) says in his excellent introduction, these were "private books, written quickly, spontaneously," and they show an apprentice learning her craft. The journal for 1897, "the first really lived year of my life," as Woolf says, would be of little interest were the author not Virginia Woolf. The brief entries are mostly mundane: "After luncheon Nessa went back to her drawings; Stella to the work house, and Father to Wimbledon." But they do reveal her absolute compulsion to put down her thoughts and experiences in writing: "What shall I write tomorrow?" Beginning with the Warboys 1899 journal, as Leaska says, "she was practising the art of essay writing for the first time," and from then on the daily entries are interspersed with short essays. Clear indications of her later skill become evident: Some relatives "move awkwardly, & as though they resented the conventionalities of modern life at every step. They all bring with them the atmosphere of the lecture room." Her career as a fiction writer is clearly indicated by: the 1905 Cornwall entries that recall her childhood, and whose details she would reimagine in To the Lighthouse; an especially moving passage in 1903 speculating on a note left by an unknown drowned woman; and her reflections in the 1906 Greece diary on Prosper MerimÇe's letters to an unknown woman. These later entries plainly reveal Woolf's strengths: accurate vivid details that bring people and places to life; compassion; and truth-telling, even when painful. Although these notebooks do not record the turbulence of her life at this time—her father's death, her own spells of depression—the reader may often infer her state of mind by the calmness or agitation of her entries. The volume also contains full footnotes and useful, interesting appendices. Necessary for Woolf scholars and fascinating for even casual readers.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1991
ISBN: 15-171287-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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