At first, the book is less a biography and more a society report of England’s upper class, but it evolves into an exciting,...
The Kennedys all kept journals, and Byrne (Belle: The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice, 2014, etc.) uses them to the fullest in this biography of Kathleen, aka Kick (1920-1948).
In the first half of the book, the author relies heavily on those journals, and the narrative occasionally gets bogged down in Kick’s lists of people she met, what she wore, and where she went. Thankfully for readers, she met the most famous people, wore the most beautiful clothes, and went to all the best parties. Byrne highlights the importance of Kick’s close attachment and similar character to her brother, Jack, nearest to her in age. Her father, Joseph, was named ambassador to the Court of St. James, mostly to get him out of Franklin Roosevelt’s hair. He and his family were loved and celebrated all over England, and the English men adored Kick. She encouraged them all without any intention of forming a deeper relationship—until she met Billy Cavendish, heir to the dukedom of Devonshire, which included Chatsworth and castles in Ireland, Scotland, Yorkshire, and Sussex. Joe Kennedy’s statement that the British Empire was at an end and could never withstand Hitler put an end to his ambassadorship as well as his career. The story gets most interesting as Kick and Billy fall in love and face their insurmountable religious differences. The original Duke of Devonshire set the familial pattern of hatred of Catholics. The author follows the war years in which the couple searched for loopholes. She could never give up her faith, and Billy had the responsibility of many Church of England parish benefices. The story is heartrending as Kick returns to the U.S., Billy gets engaged to another, and the war rages on.
At first, the book is less a biography and more a society report of England’s upper class, but it evolves into an exciting, heartbreakingly tense love story.Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-229627-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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
Well-told and admonitory.
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
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