That a man can spend seven years chained to a wall and less than two years later write such a lucid and compassionate memoir...
Tremendously moving account by the AP's former Chief Middle East Correspondent of his 2,454 days as a hostage of the Islamic terrorist organization Hezbollah.
Anderson's memoir comes fast after fellow hostage Brian Keenan's An Evil Cradlingand complements it superbly. (A third hostage memoir, Terry Waite's Taken on Trust, is due out from Harcourt Brace in October but with no advance galleys.) Anderson shares neither Keenan's word-mastery nor his relentless focus on what goes on inside the hostage's cell, heart, and mind (Anderson's major attempts here at introspection, free-form poems that dot his text, are best overlooked). But the ex-reporter's plain and simple narration still packs a wallop and offers much deeper background on political maneuvers surrounding the hostage drama (including Oliver North and Ronald Reagan's respective roles)—with this background complemented by italicized reminiscences from Anderson's then-fiancee, Madeline Bassil. Anderson is also more frank than Keenan about the fluctuating condition of his fellow hostages (who for a time included Keenan himself), especially about squabbles (with up to five men chained into a tiny room, feuds sometimes lasted for weeks), as well as the madness that afflicted American hostage Frank Reed. Otherwise, the memoir at hand much parallels Keenan's: a litany of abuse, suffering, and despair; a paean to love, hope, and courage—which, in Anderson's case, finds its wrenching apexes on the day when Terry Waite, after four years in solitary, is led into Anderson's group of hostages; and on the day when Anderson, blindfolded, feels "Someone [put] a hand on my shoulder'' and is told, 'I'm a Syrian colonel. You're free.'"
That a man can spend seven years chained to a wall and less than two years later write such a lucid and compassionate memoir of his ordeal is a remarkable testament to humanity—as well as an unimpeachable indictment of the terrorism that chained his body but not his spirit.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1993
ISBN: 0-517-59301-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
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
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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