A solid and captivating look at these remarkable pioneers of modern fiction.
The wild freedom of the imagination and the heart, and the tragedy of lives ended just as success is within view—such a powerful story is that of the Brontë children.
Reef’s gracefully plotted, carefully researched account focuses on Charlotte, whose correspondence with friends, longer life and more extensive experience outside the narrow milieu of Haworth, including her acquaintance with the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, who became her biographer, revealed more of her personality. She describes the Brontë children’s early losses of their mother and then their two oldest siblings, conveying the imaginative, verbally rich life of children who are essentially orphaned but share both the wild countryside and the gifts of story. Brother Branwell’s tragic struggle with alcohol and opium is seen as if offstage, wounding to his sisters and his father but sad principally because he never found a way to use literature to save himself. Reef looks at the 19th-century context for women writers and the reasons that the sisters chose to publish only under pseudonyms—and includes a wonderful description of the encounter in which Anne and Charlotte revealed their identities to Charlotte’s publisher. She also includes brief, no-major-spoilers summaries of the sisters’ novels, inviting readers to connect the dots and to understand how real-life experience was transformed into fiction.
A solid and captivating look at these remarkable pioneers of modern fiction. (notes and a comprehensive bibliography) (Biography. 12-16)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-57966-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
Fans of all things martial will echo his “HOOYAH!”—but the troubled aftermath comes in for some attention too.
Abridged but not toned down, this young-readers version of an ex-SEAL sniper’s account (SEAL Team Six, 2011) of his training and combat experiences in Operation Desert Storm and the first Battle of Mogadishu makes colorful, often compelling reading.
“My experiences weren’t always enjoyable,” Wasdin writes, “but they were always adrenaline-filled!” Not to mention testosterone-fueled. He goes on to ascribe much of his innate toughness to being regularly beaten by his stepfather as a child and punctuates his passage through the notoriously hellacious SEAL training with frequent references to other trainees who fail or drop out. He tears into the Clinton administration (whose “support for our troops had sagged like a sack of turds”), indecisive commanders and corrupt Italian “allies” for making such a hash of the entire Somalian mission. In later chapters he retraces his long, difficult physical and emotional recovery from serious wounds received during the “Black Hawk Down” operation, his increasing focus on faith and family after divorce and remarriage and his second career as a chiropractor.
Fans of all things martial will echo his “HOOYAH!”—but the troubled aftermath comes in for some attention too. (acronym/ordinance glossary, adult level reading list) (Memoir. 12-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-01643-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even rabid fans of Lennon or the 1960s will find new information and angles in this searching study.
On the verge of her 80th birthday (Feb. 18, 2013), Ono steps out of her iconic late husband’s shadow for a sympathetic profile.
The authors present her as a groundbreaking creative artist whose work has been misunderstood, not to say derided, for decades and who was unjustly vilified as the woman who broke up the Beatles. They describe a comfortable upbringing in Japan and the United States, childhood experiences in World War II and artistic development as part of New York’s avant-garde scene in the 1950s and early ’60s. The book goes on to chronicle her relationships with various husbands, including “soul mate” John Lennon, and her two children, life as a peace-activist celebrity in the ’70s, and (in much less detail) her activities, honors and exhibitions after Lennon’s death. The account is occasionally trite (“Yoko and John were stressed to the max”) or platitudinous, and it’s unlikely to persuade younger (or any) readers to appreciate Yoko’s creations—which run to works like an 80-minute film of naked rumps walking by and sets of chess pieces that are all the same color—as great art. Nevertheless, it does impart a good sense of conceptual and performance art’s purposes and expressions along with a detailed portrait of a complex woman who for several reasons has a significant place in our cultural history.
Even rabid fans of Lennon or the 1960s will find new information and angles in this searching study. (photos, timeline to 2009, resource lists) (Biography. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0444-4
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
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