A powerful, revealing and authoritative depiction of one the 20th century’s most notorious literary figures.
Monumentally engaging account of W. Somerset Maugham’s fiercely protected personal life (1874–1965).
On the surface, Maugham’s life was fulfilling and successful. His many plays, novels and stories earned him great fame and wealth, and his marriage to the socialite Syrie Wellcome provided him with a posh London home complete with lavish dinner parties with fashionable guests. Additionally, his handsome income allowed him the freedom to travel the world, including French Polynesia and the Far East, providing him with some of the most robust literary inspiration of his career. Maugham’s emotional well-being, however, faced constant strife. From the death of his parents during childhood, Maugham was insecure and shy and suffered a debilitating stammer. He was also secretly homosexual. Literary biographer Hastings (Rosamond Lehmann, 2002, etc.), who had extensive access to Maugham’s surviving letters and interviews with his only child, spares no detail in describing these other facets of the famous writer’s existence. She writes with great perception about Syrie’s duplicity and selfishness, the sham marriage providing Maugham with both the image of respectability (which “had always been of the utmost importance to him”) but also much misery. It was his tumultuous relationship with the vivacious Gerald Haxton, with whom he shared his life for almost 30 years, that was Maugham’s true passion—maintaining a pretense with Syrie was a tiresome, and expensive, chore. Haxton accompanied Maugham on his far-flung adventures, times that would remain some of the most cherished of his life. Hastings also recounts Maugham’s two stints with British Intelligence, where he thrilled at secreting information and disseminating propaganda, episodes that would inspire Maugham’s much-admired Ashenden stories. All of the drama, intrigue, heartbreak and joy that marked Maugham’s life is reconstructed by the author in enthralling, novelistic prose.
A powerful, revealing and authoritative depiction of one the 20th century’s most notorious literary figures.Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6141-9
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
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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