Martin observes that she is not a Catholic or particularly religious, not a scholar of medieval Italy, “not even a man.”...
Literate, sympathetic vignettes from the life of St. Francis of Assisi.
Novelist Martin (Italian Fever, 1999, etc.) puts her storytelling skills to good use in this impressionistic, respectful appreciation of St. Francis’s life. Many of the scenes are so well realized that they resemble tableaux vivantes: Francesco di Pietro Bernardone’s repudiation of his family wealth for a life of poverty, his mysterious acquisition of stigmata after weathering a mountaintop storm, his conversations with crusading knights and dangerous beasts, his painful death—all these spring to life from the page. Drawing on a wealth of documentary evidence, but cheerfully inventing dialogue, the author takes pains to emphasize that “though San Francesco was a great mystic, he was also entirely of this world,” with all the attendant urges and frailties. For all that, Martin does a fine job of depicting Francis’s otherworldly qualities—as when, in one memorable episode, an errant spark sets his robe on fire and Francis refused to allow his fellow monks to put it out, murmuring, “Oh, do not harm Brother Fire.” (Later he goes naked, explaining that he feels shame for denying Brother Fire a meal.) Though not overly concerned with historical setting, Martin offers useful asides on Francis’s era, noting, for instance, that his radical renunciation of money came in a period when currency was an increasingly important instrument, and when guarding it grew into an obsession among Italy’s well-to-do.
Martin observes that she is not a Catholic or particularly religious, not a scholar of medieval Italy, “not even a man.” Nevertheless, her nuanced, thoughtful portrait of the medieval Italian reformer, so torn between manhood and sainthood, will be of great appeal to many.Pub Date: March 13, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-40983-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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
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