A spiritless biography of one of the most inspiring of all motion picture stars. Certainly this fine actress and great beauty is a natural for biographical treatment. She was born in Brussels to a British father and Dutch mother. Her father deserted the family when Audrey was six, and Audrey and her mother found themselves trapped in Holland when the Nazis invaded. As a child, she saw the horrors of German occupation and later did some work for the Resistance. After the war, she sought work as a dancer, but her personality was so strong that she was pulled forward and made into an instant star with her first Broadway play (Gigi) and her first motion picture (Roman Holiday), for which she won an Oscar. She achieved recognition as both a wonderful performer and as one of the defining images of feminine beauty. After her leading lady days had ended, she turned to charitable activities and became a tireless worker for UNICEF. Harris (Lucy & Desi, 1991) has clearly done his research. There is much information here, some of it new, such as the revelation that Hepburn's parents were involved with Sir Oswald Mosley's preWW II fascist movement. Hepburn emerges as a truly admirable person, seemingly beloved by all who came into contact with her. Unfortunately, there is no magic in Harris's writing to match the magic in Hepburn's performances. When his prose isn't flat, it's either ungrammatical (``But who knew then that except for being heavily bombed, England would never be conquered or occupied by Nazi Germany'') or awkward (``She seemed to walk on music''). Nor does he attempt more than the most superficial analysis of Hepburn's talent or mystique. Audrey Hepburn seems destined to be remembered as one of the screen's lasting icons, and she deserves a first-rate biography. Sadly, this isn't it. (16 pages of b&w photos, not seen).
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-75800-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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