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JEALOUSY

Name: JEALOUSY
Author: Catherine Millet
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1915-5

THE OTHER LIFE OF CATHERINE M.

by Catherine Millet & translated by Helen Stevenson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2010

Remarkably honest. There is something both sad and deeply satisfying about watching this legendary mistress of emotional...

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The famously sexually open memoirist grapples with jealousy.

In her bestselling memoir (The Sexual Life of Catherine M, 2002), Paris art critic Millet shocked the world with her unapologetically candid descriptions of an extravagant sex life with no boundaries and, seemingly, no consequences. After losing her virginity at 18, she immediately engaged in a weeklong bacchanalia of group sex. As an adult, she moved between long-term partners, but was consistently involved in sexual relationships with other people. She eventually ended up in a committed but open marriage to a fellow critic named Jacques. Soon after, however, Millet found in Jacques’ study a series of letters and photographs indicating that he was having an emotional, as well as physical, affair with another woman. Just as with her sexual life, Millet discusses her jealousy of this woman in a detached, intellectual tone, laying it out nakedly with no sense of embarrassment—though with some personal shock at the circumstances, as if her openness toward sexual pleasure ought to have left her immune to jealousy. To cope, the author traveled through Europe, obsessing about the details of the affair, calling Jacques in various states of emotional distress and at times retreating totally within herself. There are particular moments of poignant pain—when she became physically sick, for example, and had no recollection of it until Jacques pointed it out—but for most of the book her grief is stunningly relatable, even ordinary. In the end, she clawed her way back to trusting Jacques, though the experience left a distinct mark on her spirit.

Remarkably honest. There is something both sad and deeply satisfying about watching this legendary mistress of emotional bravado crumble.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-8021-1915-5

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PSYCHOLOGY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SEXUAL LIFE OF CATHERINE M.
by Catherine Millet & translated by Adriana Hunter

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.