From French author and producer DelbÇe, a fictionalized biography of current French feminist martyr Claudel, whose ill- starred life has also been the subject of a 1989 movie (Camille Claudel), as well as a play by DelbÇe. Reflecting its theatrical origins, the novel proceeds in a series of set pieces to tell the life of a talented woman doomed by a famous brother and even more famous lover. Born in 1864 to an ill-assorted couple, with a mother, provincial in habit and outlook, doing all she could to crush her daughter's spirit, Camille was determined from childhood to be a sculptor. Encouraged by her father, she took lessons and, when the family moved to Paris, was apprenticed to the much older Auguste Rodin, who—though immediately recognizing her tremendous talent—was equally ready to use it for his own ends, getting her to work on such pieces as the famed Burghers of Calais and Gates of Hell. Meanwhile, her younger brother, Paul, went on to become a famous poet. Camille soon became Rodin's lover, exhibited some of her own pieces, but found herself the subject of gossip and unkind speculation—her powerful and original work was thought to be really Rodin's. Rodin himself, unable to leave his loyal mistress, the aging Rose, was congenitally unfaithful, as well as overly demanding of Camille's assistance in his studio. He also seems to have stolen Camille's ideas, using one of her most cherished concepts for his famous statue of Balzac. Poor, unable to afford expensive sculpting supplies, and neglected by her increasingly famous brother, Camille began in 1906 a downward spiral into a madness that could confine her for 30 years to an asylum, where she died in 1943. A sorry tale of a wasted talent and life that deserves something better than this melodramatic, impressionistic account— an account long on effects and short on insight. (Includes 16 pp. of original photographs of Claudel's work and life.)
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1992
ISBN: 1-56279-026-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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