It is hard to imagine that Samuel, as a boy, struggled to translate “Hast Du genug fur Heute?” (“Do you have enough food for...
First-time memoirist Samuel tells the story of life after WWII.
The author’s father was a Luftwaffe officer during the war. As the Reich begins to collapse in 1945, ten-year-old Samuel, his mother, and his sister flee Germany, making a terrifying and pitiful home for themselves in refugee camps. Eventually the family returns to Strasbourg, where Samuel begins to come to grips with two evils: the Nazi regime that ruled during the war, and the Communist apparat he now has to contend with. Later on his family moves to America, and (as we learn in the epilogue) Samuel goes on to serve in the US Air Force for three decades. The descriptions of the horrors of war and its aftermath are a touch too predictable to hold the reader’s attention, but Samuel’s portrait of life in Germany (especially in the innocent days before the Reich crumbled) are lovely and evocative and manage to humanize German civilians under Hitler. Especially moving are Samuel’s descriptions of his grandparents, Oma and Opa Samuel. They were the one sure source of love in young Samuel’s life—his mother never had a kind word for him, and she often pummeled him with a rug beater or locked him in a broom closet for hours on end. Oma is a font of wise aphorisms, however, and Opa subtly teaches Samuel to resist the Reich (instructing him to greet people with “Guten Morgen” instead of “Heil Hitler”). “My grandparents’ house was full of mysteries,” Samuel writes, as he goes on to describe his exploits in the Green Room (so-called for its thick, verdant velvet) and his first taste of liquor at his Opa’s knee.
It is hard to imagine that Samuel, as a boy, struggled to translate “Hast Du genug fur Heute?” (“Do you have enough food for today?”) into English—for now his prose sings (or, at least, whistles and hums some lovely tunes).Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-57806-274-8
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
A father's close-up view of his daughter's growing up, from her active days in the womb to the exhausted tantrum at the end of her third birthday. Hall is a writer of both fiction and nonfiction (The Impossible Country, 1994), but it is the novelist's sensibility that he brings to this biography of his first child, Madeleine. He has done his research on mental and physical development of the infant to the age we now call preschooler: the prehensile grasp of newborns, so strong in the first days; the separation of ``me'' from ``not-me''; the understanding of object permanence; the development of mobility, self-awareness, language; issues of control (the two-year-old's ``No!''). But to his close observations of her development (he was the parent on duty exactly ``40 percent'' of the time), he brought also a familiarity with myth and the growth of consciousness, and a poetic sensibility that realizes things are not always what they seem. A simple example: Blowing out her second birthday candles disconcerted Madeleine. Normal interpretation: Where did the flame go? What magic is this? But Hall probes deeper. Interpreting a photograph from that event, he sees Madeleine as looking ``worried and guilty''; had she ``broken'' or ``killed'' the flames? Is she beginning to understand herself as an instrument, a cause of the effect? When she begins to fear the monsters in the shadows, Hall reads and rereads the books meant to reassure her but finally comes to grips with Madeleine's very real dread and assigns himself to protect her: ``If a tiger came in here, I'd give it a karate chop.'' ``Poop'' is also a big issue, as is Madeleine's ambivalence at the arrival of her baby sister. Like every first-time parent, Hall seems to project his own childhood doubts and fears onto his daughter. Nevertheless, it's a pleasure to have a father report so astutely and with such concern on a baby growing up.
Pub Date: Nov. 10, 1997
ISBN: 0-395-87059-3
Page Count: 257
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An annoying, superficial, and spiteful reductionist biography of the late Italian filmmaker. Baxter (The Hollywood Exiles, 1976) is more intent on dashing the self-promulgated ``myth'' of Fellini (192093) than on the assemblage of a creditable life story. Presented a Lifetime Achievement Oscar shortly before he died, the Italian director was a consistent prize winner in Hollywood, at Cannes, and elsewhere with such landmark films as La Strada (1954), Nights of Cabiria (1957), La Dolce Vita (1960), 8´ (1963), and Amarcord (1973). Baxter provides detailed synopses of most of the films and delves into such background material as the development of the screenplays, casting, and selection of the crew. He discusses Fellini's childhood in Rimini and youth in Rome; his early exposure to cinema and some of his influences; his career as a cartoonist/journalist; his 50-year marriage to actress Giulietta Masina (``a relationship,'' Baxter claims, ``more like brother and sister''), and his supposed jealousy of and resistance to her emerging stardom following La Strada and Cabiria; his lordly treatment of those who worked for him; and his tumultuous association with producer Dino de Laurentiis. The author also catalogues, with little amplification and plenty of innuendo, ``a parade of sexually charged images'' from Fellini's childhood and dreams, which often became manifest in his films. Throughout, there is a persistent, pointless sniping. Baxter hints that Fellini bribed his high school teachers. We learn that he didn't really run away with the circus. He notes that as a 1930s schoolboy Fellini was photographed ``smartly turned out'' in his youth group uniform, implying that this somehow negated his adult anti-fascist beliefs. Baxter goes to great lengths to point out that Fellini's distant father, dominant mother, and ``a sensitive, creative disposition'' are ``often associated with homosexuality, but there's no evidence of physical affairs.'' Utterly lacking in artistry or insight—an unbearably long, trashy tabloid article. (24 pages of b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11273-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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