Amazon.com
The Nanny Diaries is an absolutely addictive peek into the utterly weird world of child rearing in the upper reaches of Manhattan's social strata. Cowritten by two former nannies, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, the novel follows the adventures of the aptly named Nan as she negotiates the Byzantine byways of working for Mrs. X, a Park Avenue mommy. Nan's 4-year-old charge, the hilariously named Grayer (his pals include Josephina, Christabelle, Brandford, and Darwin) is a genuinely good sort. He can't help it if his mom has scheduled him for every activity known to the Upper East Side, including ice skating, French lessons, and a Mommy and Me group largely attended by nannies. What makes the book so impossible to put down is the suspense of finding out what the unbelievably inconsiderate Mrs. X will demand of Nan next. One pictures the two authors having the last hearty laugh on their former employers. --Claire Dederer
Book Description
The Nanny Diaries has become an international phenomenon. Reviewed, featured, mentioned, or dissected in every major newspaper, magazine, and on every national and local television show, The Nanny Diaries has struck a chord with readers everywhere. With more than 650,000 copies currently in print and atop bestseller lists nationwide, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus' biting satire of the glamorous life on Manhattan's Upper East Side offers both an insider's view and a great read. 'Addicting,'* 'delicious,'** and 'diabolically funny'***, The Nanny Diaries is sure to be the must-read paperback of 2003. Struggling to graduate from New York University and afford her microscopic studio apartment, Nanny takes a job caring for the only son of the wealthy X family. She rapidly learns the insane amount of juggling involved in ensuring that a Park Avenue wife who doesn't work, cook, clean, or raise her own child has a smooth day. A poignant satire, The Nanny Diaries punctures the glamour of Manhattan's upper class to reveal the truth behind the Park Avenue veneer.
Customer Reviews:
Good writing. Unbelievable insight........2007-10-07
Wow. This book touched me because I know it's based on reality. The two authors experienced the surreal world of rich, non-feeling mothers serving as the inspiration for the book.
*spoilers to follow*
I was floored when Mrs. X became pregnant again. Completely self-centered and trying to hang on to the last thread of her marriage to her obviously cheating husband.
How she couldn't stand to be alone with her son.
How she couldn't even begin to understand the bond her young son had with Nanny. And it was more important to punish her for not respecting her authority than the devastating impact it might have on her child. (How dare her want to attend her own college graduation??)
The best laugh out loud moment for me was when Nanny was completely trapped in Nantucket for over a week I believe ... and took advantage of Mrs. X's "post-coital glow" and actually asked permission to leave early. I think it was the only time in the book Mr. X paid any attention to Mrs. X so of course, the answer was "yes." Too much.
I thank the authors for the insight into this interesting / sad world.
As a deep-feeling, very involved mother, I'm floored that there are mothers out there like Mrs. X. You can have your Park Ave. apartments and unlimited bank accounts and french "lavender water." I'll keep my coupons, Walmart and beautiful babies' hugs and kisses. :) :) :)
It was OK.......2007-10-03
Wasn't thrilled with the book. I had heard wonderful things - people raving about this book & with the movie coming out, I couldn't wait to read it. But it wasn't as great as I had antisipated, nor as great as people had let me to believe. It was OK - took me a while to get into it. Then I thought it kind of ended abrubtly. But it was OK. Amusing at times to see what Nan had to put up with, but not alot in it to keep me coming back for me. It actually took me a while to finish.
Loved It!!.......2007-10-01
I absolutely loved this book! I couldn't put it down! It's a must read for anyone who works with children and enjoys it like I do!
Courtesy of Teens Read Too.......2007-09-27
Nanny is going to NYU to get her degree in child care, but first she must deal with the X's.
The X's are a typical rich New York family: Dad is a workaholic; Mom doesn't have a job but is too busy shopping and running her social life to raise her child; Grayer (nicknamed Grover/Grov) is the four-year-old who wants nothing more than his parents' attention.
Nanny becomes very attached to Grayer, who is absolutely adorable and really likes Nanny because she is the one raising him. Nanny and Grayer go on many adventures together and Nanny must deal with the crazy Mrs. X, who doesn't come home when she says she will, doesn't pay within a normal time frame, and is just downright mean to Nanny -- and to her own child.
This is a great story of love and affection, and also the lack of it. I really liked reading this book because Nanny has a life outside of her job, like falling in love with H.H.-Harvard Hottie. Nanny and Grayer are realistic and the parents are the crazy people in the book, which makes this a great view for teens.
I had a lot of fun reading THE NANNY DIARIES, and will recommend it to all of my friends who have ever babysat for crazy parents!
Reviewed by: Taylor Rector
a little too dark .......2007-09-27
I read this book expecting to get a good laugh, but instead found a very dark tale about a girl who discovers the struggles of being a nanny for New York high society. While the novel is very well written and quickly grabs one's interest, I didn't find the book at all funny. If you're looking for an amusing story, you're not going to find it here.
Average customer rating:
- Diary about Crap
- Tortured Artist and Missing Rooms
- a masterpiece in its own right
- disappointing and tedious
- A rolling stone collects no moss.....
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Diary: A Novel
Chuck Palahniuk
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Contemporary
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ASIN: 1400032814
Release Date: 2004-09-14 |
Book Description
Misty Wilmot has had it. Once a promising young artist, she’s now stuck on an island ruined by tourism, drinking too much and working as a waitress in a hotel. Her husband, a contractor, is in a coma after a suicide attempt, but that doesn’t stop his clients from threatening Misty with lawsuits over a series of vile messages they’ve found on the walls of houses he remodeled.
Suddenly, though, Misty finds her artistic talent returning as she begins a period of compulsive painting. Inspired but confused by this burst of creativity, she soon finds herself a pawn in a larger conspiracy that threatens to cost hundreds of lives. What unfolds is a dark, hilarious story from America’s most inventive nihilist, and Palahniuk’s most impressive work to date.
Download Description
Chuck Palahniuk, the bestselling author of Fight Club, Choke, and Lullaby continues his twenty-first-century reinvention of the horror novel in this scary and profound look at our quest for some sort of immortality.
Diary takes the form of a "coma diary" kept by one Misty Tracy Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt. Once she was an art student dreaming of creativity and freedom; now, after marrying Peter at school and being brought back to once quaint, now tourist-overrun Waytansea Island, she's been reduced to the condition of a resort hotel maid.
Peter, it turns out, has been hiding rooms in houses he's remodeled and scrawling vile messages all over the walls -- an old habit of builders but dramatically overdone in Peter's case. Angry homeowners are suing left and right, and Misty's dreams of artistic greatness are in ashes. But then, as if possessed by the spirit of Maura Kinkaid, a fabled Waytansea artist of the nineteenth century, Misty begins painting again, compulsively. But can her newly discovered talent be part of a larger, darker plan? Of course it can...
Diary is a dark, hilarious, and poignant act of storytelling from America's favorite, most inventive nihilist. It is Chuck Palahniuk's finest novel yet.
"Just for the record, Diary is as hypnotic as a poised cobra. Chuck Palahniuk demonstrates that the most chilling special effects come not from Industrial Light and Magic but from the words of a gifted writer."
IRA LEVIN, AUTHOR OF ROSEMARY'S BABY
Customer Reviews:
Diary about Crap.......2007-09-19
Most of Up-Chuck's books are crap except Survivor and Fight Club. Diary is forced - raped in an alleyway and nobody cares. The book is forced for two reasons: 1) the reader is forced through pathos to have pity for the main character, but it's too sentimental to be pittied; it's forced. 2) the other characters are literrally trying to make the subject's life hard so she'll have emotional pain because the book wants to express that pain equals artistic skill. This idea of pain equals artistic skill is forced down our throats for too many pages. Up-Chuck really needs to find out what substance means.
Tortured Artist and Missing Rooms.......2007-09-08
This is my first Chuck Palahniuk book, and I didn't know what to expect or which title to choose, but I am pretty happy with the results. The author was suggested to me, and I feel like I have found a great new writer. This story is, as titled, in the form of a diary. It opens with a distraught wife (whose husband just attempted suicide) who receives a call about a missing room. Ok, I know it sounds like it doesn't make any sense, but it works so beautifully.
Rooms all over the resort island appear to be disappearing, until Misty and a graphologist figure out that her husband Peter has been filling these rooms with secret messages when remodeling them, then walling them off. Misty, an artist, continues to find messages in books on local artists and other strange places. She is suffering for her art, literally, but her family continue to press her to create more art (to save the island).
As strange as this plot sounds, it's easy to get carried away with the story, waiting to see where it will take you (and the main character) next. There are a few things I would have edited out, but overall it's a pretty great book. I especially loved all the stuff Palahniuk included about art, paints, and the creative process. This book is not like anything you've encountered before (unless you already are familiar with the work of Chuck Palahniuk); for those who haven't read any of his work, I highly recommend this author and book.
a masterpiece in its own right.......2007-08-09
I'll admit that getting into this book was a slow go; much slower than Choke or Invisible Monsters [for me personally.] Like his other novels, though, it grabs you, pulls you in, and sends your mind on the ride of its life.
I picked this book up because an friend of mine said it inspired him to get back into art, but never imagine I'd end up so engrossed. Palahniuk brings you in as an outsider, and by the end has you seeing and experiences through the eyes of Misty Marie Wilmont. You have no choice but to succumb to the power.
disappointing and tedious.......2007-07-27
As a Palahniuk fan, this novel disappointed me to no end. At no point while I was reading it was I interested. It was just plain boring; the main character was self-pitying and annoying and all the other characters lacked depth. I am usually a quick reader but this book took me forever to get through. The whole experience was downright painful and unfortunately I cannot start a book without finishing it. I know that Palahniuk's claim to fame is his simplistic and minimalistic writing style and in most of his other novels it works, but in this one alot of his lines are just redundant. I feel like I'm stuck in one chapter throughout the whole novel. Do yourself a favor and don't waste your money on this book.
A rolling stone collects no moss............2007-07-24
Ok! I've never had so much troubble finishing a book by Chuck Palahniuk. He's one of my favorite authors, but this book took me literaly a year to read because it couldn't keep my attention.
HOWEVER!!!!!!
When I did finally finish it, I fell in love with it. The whole book is just building up to the end and that's it. Everything that you're confused about, question, or think might happen is wrong. It's such a great twist that it makes the whole book. But like I said it all amounts to the end.
Amazon.com
"Disgusting as he usually was," Hunter Thompson writes in this, his 1959 novel, "on rare occasions he showed flashes of a stagnant intelligence. But his brain was so rotted with drink and dissolute living that whenever he put it to work it behaved like an old engine that had gone haywire from being dipped in lard." Surprise! Thompson isn't writing about himself, but one of the other, older, aimlessly carousing newspapermen in Puerto Rico, a guy called Moberg whose chief achievement is the ability to find his car after a night's drinking because it stinks so much. (I can smell it for blocks, he boasts.) The autobiographical hero, Paul Kemp, is 30, trapped in a dead-end job (Thompson wound up writing for a bowling magazine), and feeling as if his big-time writer dreams, soaked in Fitzgerald and Hemingway, are evaporating as rapidly as the rum in his fist.
In fact, Thompson was only 22 when he wrote The Rum Diary, but his fear of winding up like Moberg was well founded. What saved him was the fantastic conflagration of the 1960s, a fiery wind on which the reptilian wings of his prose style could catch and soar to the cackling heights of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Puerto Rico in 1959 doesn't have bad craziness enough to offer Thompson--just a routine drunken-reporter stomping by local cops and a riot over Kemp's friend's temptress girlfriend, a scantily imagined Smith College alumna who likes to strip nude on beaches and in nightclubs to taunt men.
Thompson's prose style only intermittently takes tentative flight--compare the stomping scenes in this book with his breakthrough, Hell's Angels--but it's interesting to see him so nakedly reveal his sensitive innards, before the celebrated clownish carapace grew in. It's also interesting to see how he improved this full version of the novel from the more raw (and racist) excerpts found in the 1990 collection Songs of the Doomed (available on audiocassette, partly narrated by Thompson). --Tim Appelo
Book Description
Begun in 1959 by a then-twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary is a brilliantly tangled love story of jealousy, treachery and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s. Exuberant and mad, youthful and energetic, The Rum Diary is an outrageous, drunken romp in the spirit of Thompson's bestselling Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels.
Customer Reviews:
The Rum Diary.......2007-09-24
Thompson's best work for beginners as well as a favorite for seasoned fans. Written more like a screenplay than any of his other works, The Rum Diary takes you on the journey of a degenerate journalist's time as a sports writer for an English rag in San Juan. From the interesting characters to the usual Thompson antics this book will not disappoint. The length lends itself to consumption of an afternoon, so if you are easily engulfed with storylines make sure you have the time. This is one of the most heavily used books in my Thompson collection as it is a great story that never seems to grow old. I can't wait to see what happens when the movie starts filming.
Best book ever.......2007-08-14
This is honestly the most enjoyable book I've ever read. Hunter S. Thompson is absolutely brilliant. You would have no idea that this was his first novel. I kept having to limit what I read in a day so that I could read it longer. I would recommend this book to anyone (and have!)
Great book.......2007-08-03
This little book was such a find. It is one that once you stop you cant put down. A good read and interesting topic.
hunter s. doesn't disappoint.......2007-07-26
this is a really good book. the pace is really quick, yet there is enough dialogue to connect you with the characters and settings. it is a real fun book to read.
Quality ish..........2007-06-06
I just finished this and it is a real hoot. I have never read any of his other works and intend to. I recommend this book for anyone who wants a laugh and enjoys reading about people who live at the bottom of the bottle. Enjoy!
Average customer rating:
- Makes kids want to read!
- 8 year old fan
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid
- Solid Story, Beautiful Art, Very Funny Mid School Story
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Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Jeff Kinney
Manufacturer: Abrams Books for Young Readers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0810993139 |
Book Description
Boys don't keep diaries—or do they?
The launch of an exciting and innovatively illustrated new series narrated by an unforgettable kid every family can relate to
It's a new school year, and Greg Heffley finds himself thrust into middle school, where undersized weaklings share the hallways with kids who are taller, meaner, and already shaving. The hazards of growing up before you're ready are uniquely revealed through words and drawings as Greg records them in his diary.
In book one of this debut series, Greg is happy to have Rowley, his sidekick, along for the ride. But when Rowley's star starts to rise, Greg tries to use his best friend's newfound popularity to his own advantage, kicking off a chain of events that will test their friendship in hilarious fashion.
Author/illustrator Jeff Kinney recalls the growing pains of school life and introduces a new kind of hero who epitomizes the challenges of being a kid. As Greg says in his diary, “Just don't expect me to be all `Dear Diary' this and `Dear Diary' that.” Luckily for us, what Greg Heffley says he won't do and what he actually does are two very different things.
Since its launch in May 2004 on Funbrain.com, the Web version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid has been viewed by 20 million unique online readers. This year, it is averaging 70,000 readers a day.
Customer Reviews:
Makes kids want to read!.......2007-10-08
I purchased this book for my 12 year old daughter as something lighthearted to read on top of her expansive list of challenging novels. She finished it in an hour, laughing all the way. I started reading it to my 6 year old son -- the first few entries were hilarious! He then picked it up on his own because he couldn't wait for me to continue. He just started reading simple chapter books and I was surprised that he mowed through this in a weekend. I think the comic style and large font were unintimidating, and the text was engaging and downright funny. Although this book is about a middle schooler, even much younger kids will appreciate the humor.
8 year old fan.......2007-10-05
My eight year old boy was having a difficult time finding things to read. So I was relieved to find something besides Captain Underpants that he can get excited about. The style of the book is accessible -- lots of white space, informal dialogue, and frequent cartoon illustrations. It's about middle school, but younger children will still enjoy it.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid.......2007-10-03
I am like the other parents who have sons who are not that crazy about reading. He got this book and read it in two and half days. Also he is very excited about the next book. I just want to say this is a great book.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid.......2007-09-17
My son never really liked reading until THIS BOOK. He is staying up late and getting up early just so he has time to read. We are anxiously waiting for the second book to come out. I think that every 10 year old boy needs to read this book. Very funny and the kids can associate with the characters in this book. BUY IT FOR YOUR CHILDREN!
Solid Story, Beautiful Art, Very Funny Mid School Story.......2007-09-13
Similar to the classic "Ramona" and Dear Mr. Henshaw books from decades past, this story is fun and moves well. There are the typical few family and friend supporting characters, so you don't get overwhelmed with a web of names to rememeber. Each day has great pictures that go along with it and add a splatter of authenticity and a trill of humor. This would make a great gift for any middle schooler who can take the joke of the title and not be self concious!
You can also view the Diary at the authors website,
--Note: I do know teh life of a MSer, I am a MS teacher and have this in my "free time" classroom bookshelf, where it is quite popular!
Book Description
This celebrated volume begins when Nin is about to publish her first book and ends when she leaves Paris for New York. Edited and with a Preface by Gunther tuhlmann; Index.
Customer Reviews:
Should be read simultaneously..........2007-09-09
...with "Tropic of Cancer." For newbies, read the synopsis of Anais Nin and Henry Miller at "wikipedia." Then start reading Volume 1 of Anais Nin's diaries (1931 - 1934). After a while, maybe 30 - 40 pages you will want to take a break. So, pick up "Tropic of Cancer" and read the first couple of chapters. Anais had Henry read her journals; Anais and Henry helped each other with each others works. The preface to "Tropic of Cancer" was written by Anais Nin (at least it was signed by her; legend has it that Henry actually wrote it). "Tropic of Cancer" was published (and immediately banned in the United States) in 1934. (By the way, off topic, Henry Miller reminds me a lot of Hunter S. Thompson, at least "Tropic of Cancer" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.")
A womans heart ...laid out boldly in words for all to see. .......2005-12-31
ANAIS has been someone who has carried me through some tough times in the past...I read her at twenty...and twenty-three and twenty-six. Her troubles were my own and we were kin. She is meant to be read by anyone who loves life...in it's full fleshy sometimes heart rending reality. She writes with the open-heart of a poet, and leaves the reader feeling more than fed. READ ANAIS NIN!
A great read.......2004-10-08
I recomend reading Anais Nin's diary. The book is such poetic prose. Some sentences really took my breath away, the way she can captivate something so beautiful and human in simple words. Since it is a diary, its main focus is her life, but its not selfish, infact she mentions herself very little. The main focus is Henry (Miller) and June, his wife. When Ananis Nin falls inlove with someone, so does the reader. Her descriptive skills gave me goosebumps, you really can see it in your minds eye, hear the music or feel the softness of skin. I highly recomend this to anyone thinking about reading this book, you will come away with a slice of life from 1930's France.
Wonderfully delicate and erotic.......2004-07-30
This is one of the most profound works of literature I have ever read. Nin leads you directly into her life, the nature of the people around her, her feelings and internal conflicts. She writes delicately and powerfully and womanly. Everyone should have a chance to read this.
Worth reading.......2004-04-11
A bit long and occasionally dense, but overall, a worthwhile and insightful glimpse into the life of a remarkable, thoughtful writer in 1930s France.
Amazon.com
Emma Thompson spent five years translating Jane Austen's work to the screen. Fans of the film will treasure this beautiful volume that includes her screenplay, diaries of the writing and the filming, and many gorgeous color pictures from the film.
Book Description
This engaging and beautiful book includes the complete Academy Award-winning script and Thompson's own diaries detailing the production of the film, reviewed by Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic as "vivid, funny, and gamy." 88 photos including 36 in color.
Customer Reviews:
Emma Thompson's dazzling adaptation of Jane Austen's novel.......2001-11-28
If you read Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" before or after seeing the 1996 film version then I think it is pretty easy to conclude that Emma Thompson's Oscar for Best Screenplay adaptation was richly deserved. After writing and performing a series of short skits for British television, Thompson was approached by producer Lindsay Doran to write the screenplay. Thompson began by dramatizing every scene in the novel, which resulted in 300 hand written pages to be followed by 14 drafts as the 1811 novel was crafted into the final script. The result was a script that manages to be not only romantic and funny, but also romantic and funny in the best Austen sense of both words.
Be aware that this is the Original Script, not to be confused with the Shooting Script. This should be clear as soon as you beginning reading, because originally Thompson had the scene shifting back and forth between Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor/John and Fanny Dashwood (credit for this revision must go, I believe, to Film Editor Tim Squyres, who recut the scene so that we get all of one side and then the other instead of alternating back and forth as in the original script). Overall the strengths of Thompson's script are in two main directions. First, she manages to convey the scope of the novel in a two-hour screenplay, no mean task. Second, the little details she adds to Austen's story are simply marvelous. For example, her use of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 ("Let me not the marriage of true minds"), which Marianne and Willoughby share to their great mutual delight and which Marianne repeats standing in the rain looking at Willoughby's new estate. In fact, Thompson revised the first scene to make it even better, having Willoughby misquote a key word in an elegant bit of foreshadowing. Thompson also makes one nice little change at the end. While Austen has Elinor bolt from the room to cry outside during the happy ending. Thompson creates a wonderful moment by having her stay in the room and having the rest of her family flee. There are not too many scenes where you are crying and laughing at the same time, but Thompson certainly created one (and has the added virtue of relying on herself as an actress to nail the performance as well). All of these are marvelous examples of playing to the strength of the cinema to bring Austen's novel to the screen.
But we get much more than just the screenplay in this volume, because Thompson includes excerpts from her diaries kept during both the writing of the screenplay and the actual production of the film. It would be nice if there was more insight into what she was thinking when writing the screenplay as I am always interested in how decisions were made and where inspiration comes from, but Thompson makes up for that with her little tales of working with director Ang Lee and the rest of the cast in making the film. Finally, in the Appendices, there is a very choice little treat, namely Imogen Stubbs' Prize-Winning Letter, written to Elinor from Lucy. Do not worry; by the time you read it you will understand why it is so hysterical. There is also a list of the fine homes and estates where "Sense and Sensibility" was filmed if you happen to be roaming around England and are interested in looking for such things.
A look inside the making of the film.......2000-11-21
Most for-sale screenplays are just that -- screenplays. Emma Thompson, who wrote the screenplay for the delightful Jane Austen film "Sense and Sensibility," chose to include journal entries throughout the filming of the movie as well, in addition to the winning entry of a contest to see who could write the best letter from Fanny to Elinor.
There is wit in the descriptions and the photos, all well-captured. The journal entries are entertaining and a good look into the making of a movie. Although be forewarned -- because they dress like the characters of S&S, they do not talk like them. There is definitely some verbal crudeness in the book, men and women alike, but if you can overlook that (or are used to it) then this book will be a delightful read for any Jane Austen fan.
A fascinating look at a remarkable film........2000-07-07
There are three separate parts to this fine volume; introduction, script and diaries. The producer of the film, Lindsay Doran, opens the door for us with her wonderful introduction. At age 13, she was determined that not only was "Jane Austen a very stupid writer," but also she would "never, never read one of her stupid books again."
Fortunately for the rest of the world, Ms. Doran changed her mind, and some twenty-five years after that first erroneous conclusion, has brought us this wonderfully witty, and extremely faithful film version of this first novel by Austen. As producer of the Kenneth Branagh/Emma Thompson film, DEAD AGAIN, she became acquainted with the woman who was not only a phenomenal actress, but also a gifted writer-one with a sense of humor and a strong romantic bent. These two qualities had proven to be the stumbling block over nearly ten years of searching for the right scriptwriter for Sense and Sensibility.
It took nearly seven years to come up with something close to a shooting script, sandwiched as it had to be between Thompson's many award-winning acting chores. Serendipity was obviously at work, however, and eventually, a budget was established, and casting accomplished.
Many of the actors Emma had envisioned in various roles had participated in a read-through the year prior to the filming; they were all in the film, in those same roles.
While the Dashwood ladies are all suitable beautiful, it is the men who are truly gorgeous. ("Repellently so," writes Ms. Thompson in the diary portion, referring to Hugh Grant. "He's much prettier than I am.") With his look-alike Richard Lumsden, they are the brothers Ferrar, Edward and Richard, with Greg Wise as the fickle Willoughby. Alan Rickman (be still my heart!) brings maturity and virility to the role of Colonel Brandon. The sets and costumes are sumptuous.
Interspersed with the actual shooting script and the diaries are some 50 photographs, 36 of them in luscious color. One script looks pretty much like another, but this one allows Ms. Thompson's wry wit to shine, especially in some of the non-spoken words. Of course, not every scene from the book could be included; the movie would have been more than six hours had they been. But the essentials are here, along with all the major characters. Providing testimony to just how perspicacious was the choice of writer is the number of awards garnered by Thompson for this, her first film script.
The diaries portion begin with a production meeting on January 15, 1995 and continue through July 9 of that year. A very small mention is made of Hugh Grant's visit to California, where he'd gone for his next film project after the completion of filming his scenes in England. A final two pages describes the 'location' houses chosen to represent those lived in by the families in the novel.
It may come as somewhat of a surprise to some readers to discover rather explicit language in the diaries. In addition to an apparent fascination with the alimentary process, our Emma has a bit of a potty-mouth, as do some of the gentleman involved, and their words are recorded, one presumes unhappily, all too accurately. They seem curiously jarring and out of place in a book otherwise devoted to the pristine words of Jane Austen.
Nevertheless, this is a lovely, hefty book; one which will bring the reader back to it time and again. There is always a new and enjoyable nugget to be mined from its various depths.
Great marriage of screenplay and journal writing.......2000-02-28
The screenplay itself is a must-read for anyone wanting an education in bringing a well-loved story to life. Emma Thompson does an ingenius job of crafting scenes that are faithful to Austen's original while inventing more that add character development and plot intrigue. I especially like her diary, though. For those who wonder what to include in a memoir of an experience, this journal is a rich model of self-disclosure and humor. I heartily recommend it!
Excellent Book!.......2000-01-04
I truly enjoyed this work by Emma Thompson. Not only is the screenplay included, with pictures, but also there are diary entries by Thompson that give insights into the making of the movie. If you loved this movie, you should read this book. I really enjoyed it.
Book Description
Imagine that, on the night before she is to die under the blade of the guillotine, Marie Antoinette leaves behind in her prison cell a diary telling the story of her life—from her privileged childhood as Austrian Archduchess to her years as glamorous mistress of Versailles to the heartbreak of imprisonment and humiliation during the French Revolution.
Carolly Erickson takes the reader deep into the psyche of France’s doomed queen: her love affair with handsome Swedish diplomat Count Axel Fersen, who risked his life to save her; her fears on the terrifying night the Parisian mob broke into her palace bedroom intent on murdering her and her family; her harrowing attempted flight from France in disguise; her recapture and the grim months of harsh captivity; her agony when her beloved husband was guillotined and her young son was torn from her arms, never to be seen again.
Erickson brilliantly captures the queen’s voice, her hopes, her dreads, and her suffering. We follow, mesmerized, as she reveals every detail of her remarkable, eventful life—from her teenage years when she began keeping a diary to her final days when she awaited her own bloody appointment with the guillotine.
Customer Reviews:
A Good Place to Start.......2007-09-27
I just finished The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette and I really enjoyed it while I was reading it. I have to admit that I am pretty ignorant about lots and lots of world history and when I was younger I didn't enjoy History class much, if at all. But this novel presents history in a very accessible way. It wasn't overwhelming with details...in a good way. And it left me wanting to read more about Marie Antoinette.
I would have given the novel four stars if the journal style of it had been true to form but the dialog was written in the third person narrative. Which I enjoyed reading but it's certainly not how a diary would be written.
I think this would be a wonderful novel for students learning about the French Revolution and for people like me who have never read anything about Marie Antoinette. It's a great starting point.
Mixed feelings on this one..........2007-08-08
Yet another fictionalized version of the life and times of one of France's most famous Queens. I am addicted to historical fiction such as this, and the detailing of her personal trials was very appealing to me. Also, diary format novels tend to be easier to read, although they usually lack depth. Erickson's vision of Marie is sympathetic, yet alludes to her naive personality traits - this is done very well, giving her very human-like qualities and a conscience, while at the same time addressing her self-righteous faults. The dialogue is well written (something I have trouble with myself) and the entire book is a good example of showing mounting despair and the culmination of events, as well as time progression. That said, the dates were strangely off (not historically, but mathematically ... for example, she said that something happened two years before, but according to the dates in the book, it was less than a year) and the entries about Marie being in love are tedious and trite. The author skipped over important events. If they are even covered, they lack detail and description. In fact, the entire tome uses repetitious images and doesn't have much visual imagery. Of course, the journal entries could just be a personificaition of the author's purpose - that is, to show a vapid, almost shallow girl mature into a woman of strength and pride - by using ideas over and over to show childishness. In the end, though, this was most definitely a page turner: gripping, sometimes shocking (see page 316), and emotionally filling. The pages of the brutality of the French Revolution were particularly eye opening for me. I found myself wanting more, Erickson's portrayal of Marie being both fascinating and quite beautiful in its own simplistic way.
THE PSYCHE OF A DOOMED QUEEN.......2007-07-23
I particularly enjoyed the diary format of The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette. It illustrated the hypothetical Marie's state of mind from her early teens up to her death by guillotine and made for a quick, entertaining read.
Author Carolly Erickson makes it clear that this is a work of fiction, not fact, but her attention to historical detail, embellished by her beautifully drawn characterizations of Marie, Louie and Axel Ferson captures every nuance of their convoluted personal relationships. The reader occasionally finds themselves feeling some sympathy Marie, the mother, as well as for the weak King Louis XVI, since it was never his desire to ascend the throne. One does wonder why he and Marie ignored the Parisian storm that was building for a dozen or more years until it became the violent hurricane known as the French Revolution. (I suppose since the outcome of the story had already been written by history, the author chose to explore the logical steps that would culminate with a trip to the guillotine).
Cheers to Ms. Erickson for her imaginative, enthralling chronicle. One can almost believe this diary was actually committed to paper by the woman who - in reality - - was much too busy living to ever have the time or inclination to pen this journal.
The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette.......2007-07-21
I found this book to be exactly what it set out to be. Entertainment. If your looking for a 100 percent true to history account of Marie Antoinette's life, look elsewhere. If your looking for a lazy summer read this book is for you. It has all the workings of a great "soap opera", monarchy, money,marriage,love affaris, partying,ect..
Enjoyable.......2007-06-25
Erickson's main objective (rather than argument) was to imaginatively elaborate on the actual lives of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI. Erickson invented dialogue and characters. Entries into the journal recited creative dialogue and the deeply personal thoughts of Marie Antoinette. The characters that were created further transformed this book into a spellbinding read. The invented characters of Amelie, Erick, and Sophie enriched the read by evoking emotions from Marie Antoinette, such as lust, love, and hatred.
Amazon.com
An idealistic young Catholic priest in an isolated French village keeps a diary describing the unheroic suffering and the petty internal conflicts of his parish. This may sound like a thin plot for a novel, but Diary of a Country Priest, by George Bernanos, remains one of the 20th century's most vivid evocations of saintly life. First published in 1937, Bernanos's Diary describes a faithful man's experience of failure. In his diary, the priest records feelings of inferiority and sadness that he cannot express to his parishioners. And as he approaches death, from cancer, the priest's saintliness remains unclear to him, but becomes undeniable to the reader. "How easy it is to hate oneself! True grace is to forget. Yet if pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to love oneself in all simplicity--as one would love any one of those who themselves have suffered and loved in Christ." --Michael Joseph Gross
Book Description
In this classic Catholic novel, Bernanos movingly recounts the life of a young French country priest who grows to understand his provincial parish while learning spiritual humility himself. Awarded the Grand Prix for Literature by the Academie Francaise, The Diary of a Country Priest was adapted into an acclaimed film by Robert Bresson. “A book of the utmost sensitiveness and compassion...it is a work of deep, subtle and singularly encompassing art.” — New York Times Book Review (front page)
Customer Reviews:
A Communist reviews The Diary.......2007-08-15
Hello,
I don't know if you could call this a review but it is a story about an old friend of mine, born to Communist organizers during the Depression, in a Southern state. To protect his privacy, as best I can, I will call him Jim.
Jim, an avid reader and a fine writer, retained his political birthright throughout his life. He was a very soft-spoken, sensitive, man of high integrity and concern for the plight of the mass of men. I have seen his eyes tear up when he would discuss injustice. I was younger than Jim in many ways but he would always listen with respect and patience to my banal obervations, seldom putting forth his own opinions. Jim treated everyone like this.
It is difficult to describe Jim's religious beliefs as he never put his forth with any vehemence or showed disrespect for those of others. I would say that he was an agnostic, maybe an atheist. I don't think he knew either. I always had the impression that he wished he could believe but just couldn't.
Jim would devour books and when I would sometimes ask him to name his favorite book he would say, "well, after The Diary...this is my favorite book". I must have asked him this question a dozen times before the light went on to ask him just why it was his favorite book. (Although a Catholic, I only had a vague notion of the book thinking it was about a young man who escaped to a seminary to avoid a woman who was chasing him).
Jim then told me his story. It was in the fifties and he had just been released from a federal penitentiary after serving time on a trumped-up charge. He headed for New York City and found himself in a strange city despondent and broke. One night to keep out of the cold he went into a Catholic church and was getting warm when he noticed a book he was unfamiliar with: The Diary of a Country Priest. He started to read it and then said to himself that he was going to steal the book. Jim then went to an all-night Hayes & Bickfords and finished the book in one sitting. After he finished the book, he had what can only be described as a mystical experience. He spoke of experiencing a wave of warmth flooding over his body and said that he felt he would never be afraid again.
In spite of the experience, Jim never embraced any religious belief system but remained a seeker.
required reading for the religious.......2007-01-26
Last year marked the 70th anniversary of Bernanos's powerful tale of a young and earnest parish priest in rural France who feels that he is a total failure. From a merely human perspective he is not mistaken. As is fitting, we never learn his name. The entire novel is a diary in which he confides his doubts and loneliness, his sense of futility, struggles with a sense of vocation ("Keep marching to the end, and try to end up quietly at the roadside without shedding your equipment."), powerlessness in the face of suffering, clashes with clergy colleagues, the history of his own family dysfunction, and even disgust with his own body due to chronic stomach pains and an impoverished diet. He knows he is physically clumsy and socially awkward. He describes his parishioners as bored, boring, and petty. They gossip about him as a "secret drinker" and a womanizer, both of which are laughable. The priest loves his flock; he visits every home every year, and he prays for them. He has a keen sense of history and his own obscure role to play. He is an astute observer of the weakness, frailty and fallenness of human nature, especially his own. By the time he dies of stomach cancer at a young age, Bernanos has painted a portrait of what we realize is a genuine saint. On his deathbed at the end of the book the priest confesses, "Does it matter? Grace is everywhere." Every person in ministry ought to read this book, but perhaps not until you turn fifty or so.
A masterpiece of psychology and spirituality.......2005-07-02
I picked this book up on a whim while at a train station. I needed something to read, and being a seminarian/Catholic geek/what have you, the title caught me.
This book struck me both as a psychologist, and as a seminarian. On the psychological level, it is a beautifully written psychological profile, of a passive agressive personality.
However on the spiritual level, it is much much more! We encounter a young country priest, whose soul is so pure, that by contrast, the failings of his parishioners seem enormous. At times he seems to be one that seems the splinter in his brother's eye before seeing the log in his own, but at other times, it becomes clearly evident that despite his flawed techniques, it is the young priest that is on the right track.
This is a beautifully written novel about a soul yearning to love God and draw others into that love but at the same time contending with the effects of a broken and fallen humanity. I highly recommend it.
A true revelation!!!.......2005-06-10
This book is an authentic triumph, an ode to the constancy, lucidity and epic statement; a real epifany and a real cahartic experience. More than a jewel: and a powerful inspiration source for this unforgettable director: Robert Bresson who might lead to secure port this story in Cinema Language,
Grace is Everywhere.......2004-12-19
Rarely, very rarely does a book effect me to such an extent that passages reappear again and again, long after the pages have been turned. Bernanos has written a provocative novel in the form of a diary, where the nameless priest writes his most intimate thoughts.
Each entry reveals the trials of a truly humble man who is troubled by his inability to pray; "...that the wish to pray is a prayer in itself, that God can ask no more than that of us." He struggles with his physical pain and awkwardness, "But I hadn't lost consciousness, I was simply a prey to my suffering, or rather to the menace of it, for the certainty of its return was a greater agony that the pain itself..."; temporal insecurity, "There must be something for my absurd self. The way in which I neglect my appearance, my natural clumsiness against which I no longer struggle, even the morbid pleasure which I feel at the thought of certain injustices...does not all this cloak an illusion whose origin in God's eyes is impure? ...instinctivly I put myself in the wrong; I can see other people's point of view."; spiritual doubt "Am I where Our Lord would have me be? Twenty times a day I ask this question. For the Master whom we serve not only judges our life but shares it, takes it upon himself."; and the emotional anguish brought upon by the parishoners who he serves.
The central character is humility, in the guise of the young priest. A humility that is much more than an absence of pride; it's a gift comprised of compassion and spritual poverty. That gift is grace and Bernanos has given humility the human dimensions that make it alive and observable. With literary brilliance he has raised it to heights that forsake its lowly origin.
Everywhere there is suffering and sacrifice, yet not all is gloom and doom. The final words from his dying lips, "Grace is everywhere" come as no surprising revelation.
Average customer rating:
- Surprising Piece of Work.....
- Still Sold at Every Gun Show in America...
- Propaganda Pure And Simple
- Far Thinking Novel
- The Turner Diaries
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The Turner Diaries: A Novel
Andrew MacDonald
Manufacturer: Barricade Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1569800863 |
Book Description
At 9:02 am on Wednesday April 19, 1995, two tons of explosives ripped apart the federal office building in Oklahoma City and the psyche of America. The worst case of domestic terrorism in our history, this explosion killed 169 men, women, and children. The author of this book has written, If [this book] had been available to the general public . . . the Oklahoma bombing would not have come as such a surprise. It has been considered by the Justice Department and other government agencies as the bible of right-wing militia groups, and the FBI believes it provided the blueprint for the Oklahoma City bombing. Barricade Books has published it so America can better understand the cause of racism and extremism.
Customer Reviews:
Surprising Piece of Work............2007-09-13
While this book is far from a literary classic, it is a rather fascinating read. I don't profess to be an extremist, but some of the things McDonald describes about the fall of our society ring eerily true.
Still Sold at Every Gun Show in America..........2007-09-07
THE TURNER DIARIES is disgusting Neo-Nazi pornography. Many have commented on Pierce's (lack of) writing ability, but it is the content of this book that would be grossly revolting to any human being with basic decency. Pierce's "protagonist" is a gun nut who rants about government "tyranny" and the loss of personal freedom and then goes about helping to create one of the most brutal, violent, racist and oppressive societies imaginable, slaughtering millions upon millions across the globe in the process. The hypocrisy is unbelievable, but what makes it more unbearable is the smug, self-righteous tone Pierce's "protagonist" takes throughout the book as he personally murders innocent men, women and children for the "Organization." Hitler is described in these pages as "the Great One" and his Final Solution is fully embraced. People are murdered in cold blood not only because they are non-White, but simply for disagreeing with the "Great Revolution"'s racist doctrines.
The book has no redeeming value whatsoever, but it is interesting for the following reasons: 1) It inspired Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City; 2) It is still sold at EVERY gun show in America alongside Nazi paraphernalia; and 3)Many of the basic tenets espoused by Earl Turner are being aggressively advocated for today by the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Take a look at the NRA's "Freedom in Peril" pamphlet, which was leaked on the Internet in early 2007, and you will see many of the themes of THE TURNER DIARIES repeated in a more "politically correct" dialect. Hyperbolic warnings of a "marching axis of adversaries far darker and more dangerous than gun owners have ever known," racist depictions of "illegal alien gangs" hovering menacingly over white America (and their women), vicious attacks on the country's free press, and even a crude drawing of a "liberated" American woman complete with hairy legs.
One of the Organization's key goals in THE TURNER DIARIES was to create chaos in urban areas and convince Americans that the government could no longer protect them. Lacking confidence in the government, they would then turn to the Organization for protection, out of simple fear. The NRA is following that playbook today, implementing policies at the federal and state level that: a) create massive loopholes in our gun laws and ensure the flow of illegally trafficked guns in our nation's cities; b) break down the rule of law by turning everyday Americans into would-be Earl Turners that can fire away on their fellow citizens with impunity (Shoot First statutes); and c) cripple law enforcement by denying them access to key information and resources (i.e., the Tiahrt amendments and a miniscule ATF budget).
In that sense, THE TURNER DIARIES (published just before the NRA's infamous "Cincinnatti Revolution") can be seen as an early landmark in an evolving right-wing response to the civil rights movement and "Peace Era" of the 1960s that continues to this day.
Don't believe me? Visit the next gun show in your area.
Propaganda Pure And Simple.......2007-08-12
Born in 1933, William Luther Pierce earned degrees in physics and worked for a time at Los Alamos; he was also an early associate of The American Nazi Party, which later became known as the National Socialist White People's Party. Following various internal conflicts, Pierce left the NSWPP to assume control of the like-minded National Youth Alliance, which in turn came to be known as the National Alliance. All these organizations were both fascist and racist in ideology. Pierce died in 2002.
In 1978, and using the pseudonym Andrew MacDonald, Pierce published the book THE TURNER DIARIES. Although it circulated through numerous racist organizations, and although it inspired the formation of at least one terrorist group in the 1980s, the book was not well known until 1995, when Timothy McViegh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people and injuring more than 800. Although McVeigh seemed to be primarily motivated by the federal fiascos at Ruby Ridge and Waco, he was also a great fan of THE TURNER DIARIES; indeed, photocopied pages of the novel were found in his possession at the time of his arrest. While THE TURNER DIARIES did not offer a "blue print" for the bombing per se, many consider that it contributed to McViegh's mindset and motivations, and the book became famous as a result.
THE TURNER DIARIES is told in the form of an extended flashback. It is 2099, and all non-white races have been purged from the earth; the diary itself tells how this purge occurred. The story begins with the government and media in the hands of Jews and liberals who have passed "The Cohen Act," a law that strips civilians of their right to bear arms. In response to this, Turner and other like-minded people launch a guerrilla war against the government. Centered in Los Angeles, they execute all Jews, blacks, people of color, and "race traitors;" in time they take possession of a nuclear weapons site and provoke a nuclear war that has the effect of killing all non-whites and leaving their own group to create an all-white fascist state where every one lives happily ever after.
In terms of literary merit, the book is very simplistic, written for people who operate at a fifth or sixth grade reading level. There are no hard words, no complex plots, and the book tends to be inconsistent in terms of internal logic. It is also very, very badly edited, with one misspelling and typographical error after another. But all of this is really a little beside the point. Simply put, the book is a vicious, paranoid, anti-American, pro-fascist, horrendously racist piece of trash. It is a highly obvious bit of propaganda that exists purely in order to recruit the uneducated into the author's own anti-American, pro-fascist, ultra-racist mindset.
Sociologists and others who wish to obtain insight into the ravings of extremist groups will find THE TURNER DIARIES a good place to begin--but if you read the book from such motives, I strongly recommend that you find a way to do so without actually buying a copy, lest you actually fund the organizations that subscribe to its philosophy. As for casual readers--no, I do not recommend it. THE TURNER DIARIES is a waste of paper that could be used to print something else--and almost anything else would be better.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
Far Thinking Novel.......2007-08-11
I had the privilege of knowing the author, Dr. William L. Pierce. He was a brilliant physicist and teacher. He thought of societal problems in the same way that he thought of physics problems. He would observe trends and counter forces in society and predict the future based on his observations. Like using a telescope to see into the future, Dr. Pierce was very far-thinking.
The author saw societal disasters looming for the White race similar to a scientist observing an asteroid heading for planet Earth. He took it upon himself to warn the White race of the impending danger. It is not something that he wanted to do. It was something that he had to do. That was his mission in life. The book "The Turner Diaries" was one vehicle that he used to accomplish his mission.
Another tool that he used was the creation of his organization, The National Alliance. Every week he would do a very deep thinking internet broadcast that is still available in free archives on the internet. Even though he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he continued with his mission of making videos and internet programs right up to the end in the year 2001.
The Turner Diaries.......2007-03-30
I believe this book has been given an undeserved bad wrap. There are some parts that you must park your brain and realize that it is only a book, but it also has many intriguing situations. Aside from some out-of-the-blue racism, the book does have content to it. It also shows what could possibly happen in our country. Liberals are always trying to take our 2nd ammendment right away from us. In fact, a bill was just circulated for that exact reason.
The main reason the Organization even revolts is because the goverment took away all legal gun ownership. There are just too many misrepresentations of this book, and it kind of disturbs me. Yeah, it gets pretty hateful, but there are too many unfair reviews on this book saying that it's all racial. The point of it is to overthrow our ridiculous goverment that begins taking rights of all Americans away.
Read it for yourself and make your own opinion on it. I thought it wasn't the greatest literary work, but none-the-less, it was still very intriguing.
Book Description
By the late 1930s, Europe sat on the brink of a world war. As the holocaust approached, many Jewish families in Germany fled to one of the only open port available to them: Shanghai. Once called "the armpit of the world," Shanghai ultimately served as the last resort for tens of thousands of Jews desperate to escape Hitler's "Final Solution." Against this backdrop, 11-year-old Ursula Bacon and her family made the difficult 8,000-mile voyage to Shanghai, with its promise of safety. But instead of a storybook China, they found overcrowded streets teeming with peddlers, beggars, opium dens, and prostitutes. Amid these abysmal conditions, Ursula learned of her own resourcefulness and found within herself the fierce determination to survive.
Customer Reviews:
Spellbinding Memoir.......2005-11-04
I loved reading this memoir. It was an easy read that was character driven and suspenseful. The language was not unnecessarily pretentious, and getting into the story was easy. Further, I knew nothing before reading this book about the European Jews who found a haven of sorts in Shanghai during WWII. While they suffered many indignities, shortages of food, medicine, shelter, and clothing, they were much better off than the European Jews who went to their deaths in the camps. Ironically, they also fared better than non-Jewish citizens of countries allied against Hitler and Japan during the Japanese occupation. Non Jewish civilians of the allied countries or captured POWS participated in tragedies like the Bataan death march. They were interred in Japanese prison camps and subjected to grueling forced labor. There they starved, froze, and died of injury and disease probably in greater number than the Shanghai Jews. The Shanghai Jews were subjected to some but not a great deal of forced labor. They were required to police their own ghetto and dig the occassional ditch. Jews did die because of a lack of medicine, sanitation and adequate nutrition. However, many Chinese civilians suffered the same losses even before the war. Still this does not excuse the ghettoization of the Jews into terribly crowded conditions, rules that precluded most of them from earning a living even though they had skills or precluded them from owning property. Luckily aid from Jews in the U.S., Canada, Australia and South Africa could reach them. For some this was their only means of support and they lived wretched lives. However, the narrator and her family arrived a little better off than most, and her father was a well liked industrious and optimistic businessman. Her mother took in mending and used her excellent seamstress skills to earn money. She tolerated her reduced circumstances without complaint and focused on the sunnier future she was sure would follow the war's end. When the author's father could not work much after the Japanese occupation, their circumstances were reduced. Because the ghetto was seriously overcrowded most occupants could afford little more space than 100 sq. ft. for every three people. Sanitation was completely lacking, and the description of the "honeypots" was truly odoriferous. Imagine several people suffering from amebic dysyntary using the same water closet outfitted with a rustic chamber pot. The author could have let her story fall into the trap of excessive sentimentality, but she did not. For this and her family's optimism I give her Kudos. I gave this four stars instead of five, because I don't think it rises to the literary level of a five star book. Still I highly recommend it. It is a great novel to take on an airplane, a vacation, or to read on an inclement afternoon. It can be read in a few hours.
MAKE A MIRACLE--You Can Do It!!!!!!!!!!.......2005-07-20
Several months ago I saw the author, Ursula Bacon, on BookTv (C-Span 2). I was very impressed with her; her lecture was excellent; and the true story of her life from the age of 10 to 18 was compelling. So, I immediately ordered her book. But the book sat on my desk for weeks making me feel guilty about not reading it. I too am a writer. So, finally after completing one book and revising another one, I took a break. And what a break that was--when I was transported to the CHINA of 1938-1946! Ms. Bacon, an only child of a Jewish family, left Germany with her parents as Hitler and his cohorts were rounding up Jews and transporting them to Death Camps.
By the time Vati, Dad, and Mutti, Mom, were looking for countries to immigrate to, every country had closed its doors to German Jews except Shanghai, China. And Shanghai was a total mess, worse than anything most Americans would ever see. But Ursula's family lived in the filthy disease-ridden slums and survived by bartering their few possessions for food. Ursula, up until then a very sheltered child, attended a Catholic school where most classes were taught in French. And most of the time she remained optimistic, made many European and Chinese friends of all ages, learned to speak Mandarin Chinese, encouraged her Mutti, and helped Vati with his business endeavors.
Ursula became an adult before becoming a teen! And she encountered many bizarre situations which she handled better than most adults. The worst was when she was 12 or 13 and killed a drunken Japanese soldier with her bare hands when he attacked her as she walked home from a friend's house late at night. She didn't tell her parents, though, because she didn't want to burden them with additional worries.
This intriguing and inspiring survival tale is about Jewish refuges in China during WW II, though it depicts the color of Shanghai and the many nationalities struggling to survive their wartorn world. I didn't want SHANGHAI DIARY to end! However, I couldn't wait to finish it, so I could pass it on to an friend whose daughter adopted the most delightful Chinese girl who I predict will someday be an important leader in some capacity.
The world has grown so small today that every American should go out of his or her way to become acquainted with other cultures and religions. And every American teenager should be given the opportunity to live in a foreign country to learn new languages and cultures. I give this wonderful book MORE than FIVE STARS! And I hope parents will share it with their teens and high school teachers will use it in their classes. Thanks, Ursula! K.J. McWilliams, book reviewer as well as author of Pirates, The Journal of Leroy Jeremiah Jones, a Fugitive Slave, The Diary of a Slave Girl, Ruby Jo, and The Journal of Darien Dexter Duff, an Emancipated Slave, winner of the Young Adult Fiction 2003 Royal Palm Literary Award.
interesting insight and perspective.......2005-07-07
I have enjoyed this book (only read half so far). I don't know how she might remember such detailed accounts, but she did have a diary. This is an amazing account during a terrible time. Worth reading.
Learn how most Chinese lived - Jewish girl in scheisse.......2005-06-04
This is not the best of wartime stories, but the author, an older Jewish lady now residing in Colorado, certainly has a good memory for the details of life in pre-Communist Shanghai. Her family fled with nothing, having entrusted jewelry to an old family friend, so they arrive in Shanghai with a precious few coins to survive. There are wealthy Jews in Shanghai who provide a very minimum bit of hospice space to sleep and some basic slop to eat, as supplies are stretched with the ever-increasing arrivals from all over Europe.
Those who like the dirty details of real life in a poor, overcrowded and ancient civilization will love this book. The author does not mince words at her horror of Chinese sanitation, more actually, the lack thereof. The paragraghs devoted to the honeybuckets, their cleaning, and the stenches of the alleyways could make even a reader vomit. I myself had toured China on the cheap in 1990 and can testify that things had changed little when one got off the main roads of Shanghai - though in the last 15 years, many of the old slums have been torn down to make way for skyscrapers and apartment silos. Going to the bathroom, usually squat Turkish style, was always a nightmare, and always to be postponed until perhaps a Western hotel could be found. Very easy otherwise to lose one's lunch! Oh well, if China was cheap, who cares about a lost lunch?
Not for the young Ursula is China cheap. The father, once a well-off printer and company owner, is now working as a pseudo-wallpaper applier, or rather, with A Chinese Partner, supervising 60 coolies to do the work. The mother has a way with needle and thread, some basic dressmaking, and begins to help other refugees with mending and adjustments. Ursula has learned English in school and from the streets, so she is also employed, as the teenager governess to three high-ranking concubines of a Chinese general. She learns all about the Chinese view of sex, marriage, views of women, and why baby girls are found dumped in the local trashbins all around her Hongkew slum. One days she even found a live, crying girl in the trash, and against all better judgment, fished it out from under the garbage and brought it to a Christian orphanage.
The luck of the refugees go up and down according to the politics and their own individual initiatives. After selling off whatever they managed to smuggle out from Europe (jewelry, winter garments, shoes, books, etc), they must become resourceful in order to eat regularly. All follow with interest whatever bits of news they can garner about the war in Europe, since it quickly moves to their corner of the world.
Then the Japanese arrive and take over Shanghai, with new rules.
Whereas before the Jews could, as foreigners, move freely through Shanghai and conduct business, rent properties, and so on, they are now rounded up and forced to live in one section only of the city, namely, the filthy slum of Hongkew. Families live all in one room, with a sheet hung between to share the room with yet another family "next door". There is no privacy, and Ursula suffers from this. They no longer can manage to do their business freely and become desperate scroungers and scavengers, as indeed are practically all the local Chinese under Japanese rule. A few Jewesses choose to make themselves useful to the Japanese rulers, to get money and presents, but they are despised by their own community.
The last years of the war are spent in this filthy condition, with neighbors and friends dying of the communicable diseases, despair, malnutrition, and random shootings and bombings. Ursula, for example, learned jujitsu, to protect herself against assault by Japanese soldiers. The girls and women learn to never go out alone, and never by night. One evening Ursula makes the mistake to walk back home alone (prescribed routes only for foreigners, by the way), and gets assaulted by a horny soldier. She aims a strong h andchop at his Adam's apple and kills him.
No one the next day commented on one more dead body in the lane, nor asked who could have done it.
My main complaint with Ursula's story is its ending. She and the other refugees dream constantly of USA, with such details as tennis courts, horseback riding and swimming pools, etc. These ideas came presumably from movies, widely shown in Shanghai. Meanwhile, although they're realists, they don't seem to realize that the bulk of the US population in the 1930's was in serious economic stress, with no such lifestyle possible. Even today, not everyone is a spoiled surburbanite by a long shot, especially new arrivals with no money, as they would be.
The fast Happy End, where they all somehow get to America, do well, get married and whatnot, with no struggle implied, is quite a letdown. HEre we have been dragged through the coals of the misery of Chinese life, in its minute details, and suddenly, presto! They somehow get allowed into their dream country (which strings did they pull, how much did it cost, etc.? why the sudden silence on how hard life maneuvers can be?) and do well. Oh? WHat did she study, what work did she find? She mentioned that her father found work with the Denver Post as a printer. Did he know English? Was it hard for him?
What did his wife do?
The main "thrill" of the book is in the details of everyday Chinese life, with its stench, its sexism, its obsessions and superstitions. These come through more clearly for a Western reader than if written by a Chinese, who takes such privations as normal. Indeed, they were, and still are, standard problems for the bulk of China and much of the Third World.
Ursula Bacon's family did not considered themselves Jews in any true religious sense, so their experience is not particularly Jewish, but German. Their German ideas and attitudes come through clearly, especially in their horror of dirt, in their love of literature and knowledge. They are open to all religions and put Ursula, in fact, in a French Catholic school, where she admires the true-believing nuns.
A great read! Just unsatisfactory ending, as if she were trying to wrap it up quickly... so maybe there's a second book coming out of this, the struggle to get a foothold in America, and their shock and horror at some of US customs, disregard for education, plenty of Jew hatred, and so on?
Apparently, also, a movie is coming out on this. Watch for it.
Ursula's Amazing Story.......2005-02-19
"If you can't change it, don't complain." Life is not about events, but it is about people. Life was truly a challenge. To escape Hitler the author and her family escaped to Shanghai, China. She learned to live one day at a time. She had a spirit of dreaming of America. America was a beacon of hope for her during this trying time. After the war she and her parents came to America after a two year struggle to get a visa and they located in Denver.
The author grew up in China as an escapee from Hitler's Germany. In China she learned to be grateful for everything. She had escaped to China as a child of ten. There with her parents she lived with 20,000 other refugees in horrific conditions. But she and her parents survived. The story is told with wonderful courage, sensitivity and even some humor. The author has learned not to hate but to love people, inspite of the hell she suffered caused by Nazi Germany. According to the author the most important emotions to have are love and gratitude. She lives her life with love of people and gratitude for all persons who have helped her during those difficult years.
For those who are interested, there is an author event available on C-Span2 Book TV for this book.
Books:
- The Patience of the Spider (Inspector Montalbano Mysteries)
- The Power of Focus: How to Hit Your Business, Personal and Financial Targets with Absolute Certainty
- The Rapture: In the Twinkling of an Eye--Countdown to the Earth's Last Days (Before They Were Left Behind, Book 3)
- The Rules of Work: The Unspoken Truth About Getting Ahead in Business (Richard Templar's Rules)
- The Secret
- The Shunning/The Confession/The Reckoning (The Heritage of Lancaster County 1-3)
- The Sword of Truth, Boxed Set I, Books 1-3: Wizard's First Rule, Blood of the Fold ,Stone of Tears
- The Templar Legacy: A Novel
- The Truelove
- Treasure of Khan
Books Index
Books Home
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