Biography Recent Picks

July 2009

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Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

Leaving India : my family's journey from five villages to five continents, Minal Hajratwala.
"Starred Review. Hajratwala, a journalist at the San Jose Mercury News, tells of the Indian diaspora experience through a part-personal, part-reported story of her extended family. Hailing from the small northwest Indian region of Gujarat, her family's ancient origins begin with the myth of a race of warriors and kings. Their migration begins in the wake of the famine of 1899, when Hajratwala's great-grandfather Motiram left to learn the tailor's craft in Fiji, leaving his wife and children behind. In the same, tireless spirit echoed in generations to come, Motiram founded a family business in his new home, then built it with the support of relatives who followed to join him. His shop eventually became one of the largest department stores in the South Pacific isles. Other family branches developed in South Africa; the U.S., where Hajratwala's parents immigrated as part of India's earliest wave of brain drain; and other locales, totaling nine countries in five continents. Throughout sojourns across cultures and across time, the family endures-and succeeds-in spite of discrimination and bigotry. Told with the probing detail of a reporter, the fluid voice of a poet and the inspired vision of a young woman who walks in many worlds, Hajratwala's story offers an engaging account of what may be one of the fastest-growing diasporas in the world." (Reed Business)

Oscar's books, Thomas Wright.
"An entirely new kind of biography, Oscar's Books explores the personality of Oscar Wilde through his reading. It argues that reading exercised a formative influence on Wilde's character and was the inspiration for his own writings. Oscar's Books tells the story of Wilde's 'long and lovely' life in a way that is fresh and engaging, from his childhood in Dublin, where he was nurtured on Celtic myth, Romantic poetry and Irish folklore; through his undergraduate years, in which he built his intellect out of books; to prison, where the Governor supplied him with literature which saved his sanity; to his final years in Paris where he consoled himself with old favourites such as Flaubert and Balzac. For Wilde, as for many people, reading could be as powerful and transformative an experience as falling in love. He referred to the volumes that radically altered his vision of the world as his 'golden books'; he gave books as gifts - often as part of his seduction campaigns of young men; and sometimes he literally ate books, tearing off corners of paper and chewing them as he read. Wilde's beloved book collection was sold at the time of his trial to pay creditors and legal costs.Thomas Wright, in the course of his intensive researches, has hunted down many of the missing volumes which contain revealing markings and personal annotations, never previously been examined. An unfamiliar Wilde emerges from this book, which draws on unpublished and little known material, yet wears its scholarship lightly. Readers of the 21st century will be enchanted by Oscar's Books." (Amazon.co.uk)

Letter to my daughter, Maya Angelou.
"For a world of devoted readers, a much-awaited new volume of absorbing stories and inspirational wisdom from one of our best-loved writers. Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter reveals Maya Angelou's path to living well and living a life with meaning. Told in her own inimitable style, this book transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight. Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and fortitude: how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward, six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son." (Amazon.co.uk)

Closing time : a memoir, Joe Queenan.
"Joe Queenan's acerbic riffs on movies, sports, books, politics, and many of the least forgivable phenomena of pop culture have made him one of the most popular humorists and commentators of our time. In "Closing Time", Queenan turns his sights on a more serious and personal topic: his childhood in a Philadelphia housing project in the early 1960s.By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, "Closing Time" recounts Queenan's Irish Catholic upbringing in a family dominated by his erratic father, a violent yet oddly charming emotional terrorist whose alcoholism fuels a limitless torrent of self-pity, railing, destruction, and late-night chats with the Lord Himself. With the help of a series of mentors and surrogate fathers, and armed with his own furious love of books and music, Joe begins the long flight away from the dismal confines of his neighbourhood - with a brief misbegotten stop at a seminary - and into the wider world. "Closing Time" is an unforgettable account of the damage done to children by parents without futures and of the grace children find to move beyond these experiences." (Amazon.co.uk)

What would Audrey do? : timeless lessons for living with grace and style, Pamela Keogh.
"The author of the bestselling Audrey Style and Jackie Style brings a charming dose of Audrey Hepburn into our everyday lives, with wisdom on relationships, fashion, home, travel and other opportunities for sophisticated living. Audrey Hepburn epitomises sophistication, generosity, glamour and beauty. Her appeal is timeless and she remains an inspiration to this day. So who better to turn to when wondering the right thing to do in our complex modern world? In an era fraught with selfishness, artifice and vulgarity, Audrey can teach us how to remain demure, sophisticated, loving and gorgeous everyday. Drawing on examples from Audrey's extraordinary life, this hugely enjoyable, beautifully-designed book offers advice on dating, marriage and seduction; style; home and family; kindness and giving; and tranquillity; in fact everything one could need for surviving the modern world. Pamela Keogh is the author of the internationally bestselling illustrated biographies, Audrey Style and Jackie Style, also published by Aurum. She has written for Vogue and the New York Times among other publications. She lives in New York." (Amazon.co.uk)

Frances Partridge : the biography, Anne Chisholm.
"Frances Partridge was one of the great British diarists of the 20th century. She was born in 1900, the daughter of a progressive mother and architect father whose friends included Henry James and Arthur Conan Doyle. After studying Moral Sciences and English at Cambridge, Frances worked in Francis Birrell and Bunny Garnett's bookshop in London. She soon became part of the Bloomsbury group encountering Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, the Bells, Roger Fry, Maynard Keynes, Dora Carrington and Ralph Partridge. She and Ralph fell in love and married in 1933. During the Second World War they were committed pacifists and opened their house, Ham Spray, to numerous waifs and strays of war. After it was over they enjoyed the happiest times of their lives together, entertaining friends such as E.M. Forster, Robert Kee and Duncan Grant. Frances' life changed abruptly with two sudden and unexpected deaths. Ralph had a heart attack in 1960 and three years later their only son, Burgo, died aged 28 from a brain haemorrhage." ( Amazon.co.uk)

Beyond the miracle worker : the remarkable life of Anne Sullivan Macy and her extraordinary friendship with Helen Keller, by Kim E. Nielsen.
"Nearly a footnote to history, Anne Sullivan Macy achieved both fame and notoriety as Helen Keller's devoted teacher-the so-called miracle worker who took an obstreperous, willful deaf and blind child and transformed her into a gifted communicator. Given her inauspicious start in life as an orphaned resident of a fetid almshouse straight out of Dickens, Macy improbably succeeded, only to have her groundbreaking achievements eclipsed by her student's charisma. Always a headstrong personality, Macy earned legions of detractors as a result of her firm handling of her prize pupil. Yet through it all, Keller and Macy forged a loving, lifelong bond that superseded all other familial and romantic attachments. Historian Nielsen focuses attention on Macy's troubled beginnings, her own devastating eye ailments, and her prodigious ambition to create a considerate yet equitable biography of a complex woman whose singular contributions to the burgeoning field of education for the blind have often been misjudged. --Carol Haggas" (Booklist)

Once upon a hill : love in troubled times, Glenn Patterson.
"At the heart of Once Upon a Hill are the author's grandparents, Jack and Kate, whose sedate old age belies the turmoil of their early life together, and apart - they had to wait ten years to marry. For Glenn Patterson trying to make sense of this small-town life in a family dominated by a formidable matriarch becomes a detective story written against the reluctance of surviving family members to talk and the simple erosion of memory. It becomes, too, a revelation of how much his own life - not least his own mixed marriage - has been shaped by events decades before he was born. So Once Upon a Hill is part memoir, part all-of-themoir. It is the story of what happens when history tries to squeeze itself into a town of ten thousand people, most of them related somewhere down the line. It is about the consequences of violence and the conditions required for love to survive. It is a story of frailty, fortitude, and finally forgiveness." ( Amazon.co.uk)

In the shadow of the magic mountain : the Erika and Klaus Mann story, Andrea Weiss.
"Thomas Mann's two eldest children, Erika and Klaus, were unconventional, rebellious, and fiercely devoted to each other. Empowered by their close bond, they espoused vehemently anti-Nazi views in a Europe swept up in fascism and were openly, even defiantly, gay in an age of secrecy and repression. Although their father's fame has unfairly overshadowed their legacy, Erika and Klaus were serious authors, performance artists before the medium existed, and political visionaries whose searing essays and lectures are still relevant today. And, as Andrea Weiss reveals in this dual biography, their story offers a fascinating view of the literary and intellectual life, political turmoil, and shifting sexual mores of their times." (Amazon.co.uk)

All this and a bookshop too, Dorothy Butler.
"Dorothy Butler (OBE) is recognised internationally as an authority on children's books and reading. She has won many major awards for her work in England, Japan, the United States and New Zealand and was declared a Distinguished Alumna of Auckland University. As well as her academic achievements, Dorothy has been a successful teacher, an innovative bookseller and the author of many much-loved children's books, all the while raising eight lively children with her husband Roy. Now in her eighties, she lives in the heritage home in Karekare that her family lovingly restored. In All This and a Bookshop Too, Dorothy shares the story of her adult life. Picking up from the first volume of her autobiography, There Was a Time, Dorothy writes eloquently of her many consuming interests, her notable friendships and her family. This is both an affecting account of private triumphs and tragedies, and a salute to the golden age of children's book publishing in New Zealand." (Penguin Group New Zealand )

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