5 comments about Marie-Therese, Child of Terror: The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter.

1. Marie Therese is the story of the only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI of France. Because of their tragic end on the guillotine, the royal couple is a favorite of biographers and historical novelists, and the first third of the book recounts the circumstances that led to their execution, the difference being that, in Marie Therese, we are looking at these events through the eyes of a young girl. The downward spiral that began with the storming of the Bastille and led to the Reign of Terror started when Marie Therese was only 11 years old. While at Versailles, "Madame Royal" was forced to hide from armed mobs screaming for her mother's blood and to step over the butchered bodies of servants.
   
   Three years later, the king, queen, Marie Therese, and her brother, the Dauphin, Louis-Charles, are incarcerated in the Temple Prison in Paris, and the horrors begin: the execution of her parents, the prolonged torture of her little brother who would die of neglect, and her own imprisonment. When she is finally released 3-1/2 years later, she is allowed to join her mother's brother, Emperor Franz II, in Austria. However, "The Orphan of the Tower" is now a young woman of steely resolve and one who recognizes the importance of her role as a representative of the Bourbon dynasty in exile.
   
   In the years following her release from prison, Marie Therese and her husband, the Duc D'Angouleme, live a peripatetic existence, finally ending up in England, where they watch the events unfolding in France. With Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the Bourbon dynasty is again restored. For the next 15 years, France will be Marie Therese's home until, once again, the French want to be rid of their king, Charles X.
   
   Marie Therese is an exhaustive, highly detailed account of the life of Madame Royal, the French Revolution, and the complexities of European politics in the early 19th century. In addition to the great events in the lives of the royals, minutiae, such as travel itineraries, meals, the appearances of numerous pretenders to the throne, are recorded. At times, the inclusion of so many mundane details bogs down the book, but for anyone who ever wanted to know what happened to the only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, they will have to wonder no longer.



2. I checked this out of the library...that, in combination with caring for little ones 24/7, meant I didn't have much time to read. As such, I had planned to simply skim through this book during my few spare moments in order to get the gist of it; however, I quickly found myself becoming engrossed and spending far too many nights staying up late reading. The first 1/2 to 3/4 of the book was particularly fascinating. The last 1/4 was slightly less so. Still, it was quite a good book, in my opinion, and I would certainly recommend it to anyone interested in this subject.



3. I loved this book. I have always wondered what happened to Marie Antoinette's daughter, and this really gives you a wonderfully detailed account of her life, and her feelings. Loved it.



4. "Marie-Thérèse: Child of Terror" by Susan Nagel is a greatly anticipated biography which provides an overview of the turbulent life of the courageous daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. Rare anecdotes and little-known incidents are pulled together into one volume to make for a consuming read. I would especially recommend it to the readers of the novel Madame Royale since it fills in many gaps which the novel, being a novel, did not cover. The Duchesse d'Angoulême, who was in looks and personality a total blending of both parents, is portrayed as emerging from a tragic situation to become one of the most powerful women in Europe. The reader shares in her triumphs, in her falls, in her heartbreaks.
   
   In most respects, Nagel quotes directly from the various memoirs to produce a highly favorable portrait of the royal family, although their foibles and faults are not ignored. The Revolution is seen mostly from Madame Royale's point of view, and her view is understandably not very benign, since as a young child she was forced to witness bloodshed and social chaos. One by one her immediate family members were led away to die. In the prison she could hear the tormented cries of her little brother but was not allowed to comfort him or visit him when he was sick. Did she hate the Revolution and all symbols of it? Yes.
   
   With sensitivity and insight, Nagel does not hesitate to demonstrate how the faith of Marie-Thérèse sustained her through so many sorrows. The books also makes it clear that Marie-Thérèse was dedicated to France in almost the same way as a nun is dedicated to her vows. For Madame Royale, no sacrifice, personal or otherwise, was too great, if it benefited her country.
   
   Rising above personal disappointments, Marie-Thérèse led a life rich in love, full of friends and devotion to the poor. I learned a great deal about her friendships with people such as Queen Louise of Prussia, Napoleon's "beautiful enemy," Louise's mother being a childhood friend of Queen Marie-Antoinette's. The Duchesse d' Angoulême's love of simplicity and her ability to relate so well to small children are qualities of which ample evidence is given. Most remarkable was her talent for stealing the show at certain crucial events, when she would appear magnificently dressed, with jewels and plumes that heightened her regal bearing, leaving no doubt in the minds of onlookers that she was the greatest princess of all.
   
   Marie-Thérèse's struggles with her memories and sad feelings are explored and might have been explored a little more. The emphasis is on her energy and dynamism, which were certainly outstanding aspects of her character. The search for what happened to her brother and the various pretenders is touched upon, not exhaustively, but then there are other books which deal specifically with those phenomena. Many fascinating details of the life of the Duchesse d'Angoulême are included, most of which are taken from primary sources, and for those aspects I found it an enjoyable read. If a person is not an admirer of Marie-Thérèse and her family, they might find it all tiresome, but I hated for the book to end.



5. This is very well written, engaging book; I highly recommend it -- I've read quite a few books about Marie Antoinette, but this is the first one that really gets into the life of Mare-Therese after she is ransomed for the french prisoners. She had tremendous grace.

5 comments about Confessions of a Carb Queen: A Memoir.

1. I agree it is a page turner to those of us who struggle with compulsive overeating but it is also repetitive ad nauseum about the fast food binges. I think what is most disturbing is the anger and how I felt she was as abusive as she was abused in her life. Her feuds with her brother, her saying she was so scared at the break in but ending up being violent back to the attacker. I have been attacked but never wanted to go down to their level, and her dishonesty about how she made money, really lost the weight etc. I also found her desperation to find a husband both before and after very telling on why she might have put on weight. She was waiting for a man to save her. She was also so disgusted by the fat women's organization that had dances, insinuating it was tawdry and the women dresed slutty,when all she was looking for was hand holding and a Jewish prince. Be real, she has many sex scenes in this book and seems to be selectively honest. And the omissions are more telling than the on and on about the binges. We really don't see how she lost the weight. She is still being secretive and just giving the reader the shockers and leaving out the fact that she did not change all that much, only her weight. I also see her as a fadist, (hating fat people including herself) ergo, the not wanting to accept herself or other fat people, and her obsession with weight lifting both before and after her weight loss. I don't trust this women and her confessions sometimes ring false. and though I couldn't put it down, at the end like a greasy burger wish I had not eaten.



2. On the face of it I was not too thrilled about reading this Confessions of a Carb Queen memoir, figuring "What else could I possibly learn?" It turns out that I could learn a lot, both about Susan Blech's astonishingly surgery-free and high carb/low fat 250 pound weight loss and about how she gained over 300 pounds in the first place. I learned about emotional eating, about lying and hiding your eating, about losing sense of yourself, about waking up and not even believing that it is your body that you live in. And I learned about taking responsibility and ultimately control over emotions, over spirit, over body, and over food.
   
   When I first opened the book and began reading about Blech's attempts at Fat Sex in the shower with her ex-boyfriend Bobby I was morbidly fascinated. "We can't. I can barely stand up. My legs hurt. My calves and ankles are blown into one mass. I call them 'cankles.' I can't see my toes.... My stomach folds onto my lap, almost to my knees. I don't translate sexy. It's another language. Feminine is far away. Human comes across only because I'm breathing."
   
   And then the binge that her anger over the misery of ending this relationship! The Binge to stop her thinking about The Body. First the 24 hour McDonald's for "a fish sandwich with extra extra tartar sauce and extra extra cheese...a burger too, with extra cheese and french fries." Supersized, of course, with Diet soda. "I almost order 18 cookies, but it's so late. So I order nine. I think to myself, See, I can cut back."
   
   The third of four children, raised by a single father (her mother had a severe stroke when Blech was young and spent her life in hospitals and nursing homes), Blech went from a young adulthood of compulsive diet and bodybuilding to completely out of control obesity, typically eating more for one snack than 4 people could eat for dinner. Most of it take out, and much of it in her car. Luckily (or not) she worked at home.
   
   She began to go out less and less and eat more and more. Going out meant not eating in front of others. Going out meant the possibility of not fitting into a restaurant seat. Once going out meant weighing down an elevator to the point where everyone had to carried out and she had to literally be hoisted like a large whale. Then one day, after her physician puts her on blood pressure medication and says the magic words, "your blood pressure is high enough for you to have a stroke", Blech decided to take back control of herself & her life. She took her life savings and credit cards and moved from NY to Durham, North Carolina to begin a new life with The Rice Diet. New city, new apartment, new clinic, new friends.
   
   At the clinic Blech realizes that she craves salt. The minute salt is removed and she starts drinking lots of water she literally drains, peeing all the time and losing pound upon pound of water. She begins to exercise, ultimately finding a personal trainer and a pilates teacher who teach her to move and to walk again. She even manages, by the end of the book, to run every bleacher in the entire UNC football stadium in under 30 minutes (I don't know if I could do that!). Blech loses 100 pounds a year and leaves the clinic after 2.5 years 250 pounds lighter.
   
   The story doesn't end perfectly. This is not a fairy tale. Yes, Blech moves back to New York City, goes back to school, and lands a job as a legal assistant at a famous law firm. Yes she wrote a book and has made numerous media appearances, yes she met and married a wonderful man, and yes she has kept the weight off. But she still has another 40-50 pounds to go, still has emotional wounds to heal, and still has to deal with some plastic surgery to remove the 20+ pounds of excess skin around her stomach.
   
   This is a gritty true life story written from the trenches of emotional and physical pain. I laughed, I cried, I was repulsed, I commiserated, and in the end I was so proud of and learned so much from Susan Blech and the work she had done for herself.
   
   This is not a diet book or a weight loss program. In fact, she does not even completely back the Rice Diet program. This is simply the story of a woman who lost a large amount a weight and it can inspire you to do anything you currently think is impossible.



3. This is a peculiar book. It has a reputable publisher, Rodale Press, but it looks like it was self-published on the cheap. There are more typos than I've ever seen in a book, it's an odd size (6x6 square, like a diary), and the paper quality is cheap.
   
   Susan Blech is shockingly candid about the crude reality of living in an obese body, and a little bit of Susan goes a long way. She seems manic, a very emotionally needy person who does everything to extreme, including eating, exercising, online dating, denial, blaming her family for her eating, driving recklessly, etc. Her family situation is sad -- a mother incapacitated by a stroke and in a nasty nursing facility -- but you can't use that as an excuse to be annoying, demanding, and overindulgent all your adult life. People who do just get sad and annoying after awhile.
   
   Although Susan provides almost Too Much Information about some things, she's frustratingly vague about how she pays for her lifestyle, including a $400 a week junk food habit, two years of eating three meals a day at a specialized diet clinic, a personal trainer, and college courses. How can you live in New York and spend all that money on food when you work from home selling printer supplies by phone? And she never tells us what she does for a job while at the diet clinic in N.C. for two years. If she did, I missed it. I've read elsewhere that it cost her $70,000 to lose the 200 pounds she dropped at the clinic. Where did the money come from?
   
   Since few of us can probably afford to stay that long at a clinic, getting three meals a day, seven days a week served by chefs, medical attention, and a personal trainer, her results may be hard to duplicate. But losing 200 pounds is an achievement. She doesn't go into close detail about the diet -- info the clinic wants you to pay for -- but we can assume it was a rigidly portion-controlled, rigidly no salt pasta, fruit and vegetables regime. She had fish one meal a week and otherwise, no meat. I suspect no dairy either. She never mentions it. Before each meal, she had to drink four glasses of water. That alone would kill my appetite. And she exercised and walked a lot.
   
   Like alcoholics who use everything as an excuse to drink, Susan seizes on any personal slight as a justification to binge eat. Recent entries on her blog indicate that hasn't changed. She's still creating situations to provoke compliments and loving affirmations from her new husband, her neediness still that raw. Poor guy has his work cut out for him.
   
   Susan's capacity to eat fast food is astounding and almost nauseating and fills the first half of the book, many circular drives through multiple take-out windows, food consumed in the car. You get the picture quickly, but she keeps telling you. I wonder why she was able to lovingly write about each of these binges without craving the stuff again. Also astounding and nauseating is her meet-ups with guys she met online. If you're a fast food eater or thinking about meeting men online, this book will cure you. It's also made me hypersensitive about salt in my food, since her salty diet was so intense, she could gain more than 20 pounds in a single weekend of going back on the fast food, all water weight no doubt. Still, putting weight on that fast is scary.
   
   If nothing else, this book might scare you straight...into dieting.



4. I found this to be a very compelling book -- the kind that's hard to put down at times! For anyone who has genuinely struggled with their weight time and again, especially those who are or have been at some point "closet/secret" eaters, this book will strike a nerve. It's brutally (& sometimes painfully) honest, which is so refreshing...BUT I just wish the author's honesty would extend to her continuing weight struggles!!! Like some of the other reviewers have posted, I was very surprised to see Susan Blech on the Today Show looking VERY hefty...and NOT saying a word about it! She has obviously regained some of the weight she lost, which is understandable and to be expected. BUT not one word was spoken about it. Instead both Susan and the interviewer talked about the book and Susan's weight struggles as though they remained things of the past! The fact that she has regained weight does NOT invalidate the book for me...BUT I just wish she would be honest about it. The fact that she isn't loses her a star in my rating!



5. I admire her for being so candid and brutally honest. I found the book very hard to put down....I'd love to read a new book with an update of her struggle.

5 comments about Bunny Tales.

1. Interesting if you have ever been to one of the Mansions Parties or if you ever watch "The girls next door" you gotta read this. Lets say "there is always two sides to a story"
   Nice book



2. I got this from a friend, and because it was free I didn't feel like I had to get my money's worth out of it. I enjoyed it a lot and found it a trashy, shocking at times, strange, and engaging book that blows apart the image Hef tries to create for himself.
   
   The grammatical errors were all over the place and that drove me nuts, but the actual content was fun. Yes, she divulges bedroom gossip - but it was about the least interesting part of the book. I enjoyed the parts about the dynamic between the gals and Hef much more.
   
   By the end I was pretty sick of all the drama and silliness. In many ways, Izabella is right that Hef wasn't very generous or understanding at times, but I think she misses the point that they had a business arrangement, not a relationship. She admits herself that she never had any alone time with Hef to really bond with him, so why is she surprised that when she has to leave, for whatever personal reason, she doesn't get an allowance? Her naiveté is surprising.
   
   Overall this is a fun book to read if you are curious about that lifestyle, but the writing and story aren't quite compelling enough to make it worth the cover price. I'd borrow it from the library.
   
   If you want to read a book about the sexy life, try Callgirl by Jeannette Angell. Written with much more style and savvy, Callgirl has a lot more in the way of juicy details about what that life is really like.



3. This woman tries to make herself sound good. She trashes all the other 'girlfriends' in the house while making herself sound educated, entitled and completely validated. She's not. She bashes Hugh Hefner and tries to make the pampered life of a 'girlfriend' sound tedious. She flaunts her law school education and tries to make light of the fact that she never passed her boards. She also tries to make it seem she wasn't basically a prostitute as a paid employee of Hef. I was bored and I ended up not liking her at all.



4. If you are looking for a book to divulge secrets about the Playboy Mansion and Hugh Hefner, this is not the book. It pretty much sums up exactly what you already know about the mansion. It jumps from topic to topic with no real outline. At one point she says she hates her life at the Mansion and the next minute she loves it. She makes it out like she is so much better than everyone else, yet she stays for the "free" ride. Also, there are numerous spelling and grammatical errors in the book. Very poorly edited. Total waste of money and time!



5. It was okay, but not written very well. The author's mind seemed all over the place. I kept wondering if anyone had actually read the book before publishing it. It just seemed like I was reading the first draft of someone's book.

5 comments about Grayson.

1. While listening to this tale as an audiobook, I was surprised to be sitting at the edge of my recliner! For a very simple premise, Lynne Cox crafted a plot with a lot of excitement.
   
   I was touched by the sense of communion between the human swimmer and the baby whale, each of them vulnerable and exposed.
   
   The communication and intelligence of the whales in this story, plus a mega-pod of dophins, made me think of the line, "Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!" the title of Douglas Adams' fourth book in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. (Where Wonko the scientist posits that dolphins were the actual creators of planet Earth.)
   
   I now own Grayson in an audio format and as a hardcover book, and I consider it a treasure.



2. A sweet story for any age. True, and the information given is stunning. Imagine swimming with a whale! Would be good to read aloud to a 9-12 year old, but I cry everytime with joy at the ending.



3. I love the ocean and found this book beautiful and moving. It describes the experience of meeting a baby gray whale and then trying to help it find its mother. There is some wonderfully descriptive writing of the ocean, and facts added in that give it more meat. It also gives lots of advice and encouragement, not to give up, to follow your dreams and that anything is possible. We bought the audio book for a family vacation and my 4 year old and 7 year old both enjoyed the story very much. They are excited to attend a grunion run and are also excited about whales.



4. (3.5 stars) When seventeen-year-old Lynne Cox is finishing her morning swim between Seal Beach pier and the San Gabriel River jetty, south of Los Angeles, she is hungry and cold. It is March, and the water temperature is in the fifties, but Lynne, a serious open-water swimmer, is in training, regularly doing three-hour workouts in the cold Pacific. When she discovers that a baby gray whale is following her to shore, she realizes that the baby must have lost its mother. Remaining in the water, alone except for the whale, she continues swimming on the chance that the baby, whom she names Grayson, will hear its mother vocalizing or that the mother will find them.
   
   For the next couple of hours, she and the whale swim the one-and-a-half miles from the pier to an offshore oil rig in deep, often rough, water. The whale is confused, often diving deep and disappearing for ten minutes or more at a time, and Lynne begins to despair. When he finally disappears for a very long time and shows no signs of resurfacing, Lynne, close to hypothermia and discouraged, decides to head back to shore, alone.
   
   By now this story is so well known that it gives nothing away to say eventually there is a happy resolution. For Lynne Cox, however, there is a much bigger story than "just" the reunion of the baby and its mother. For her, this experience has been a test of her strength, her will, and her faith, resulting, finally, in her personal triumph.
   
   A morality tale about the interconnections of man and nature, Grayson is full of the "truths" drawn by a sensitive seventeen-year-old who sees the baby whale in human terms. She thinks only positive thoughts, sending mental messages to the baby whale and to his mother, telling them that she will help them find each other. She explains that "there are two ways of thinking--one of possibility and hope, the other of doubt and impossibility," adding that sometimes "the things that make the least sense to other people make the most sense to me."
   
   Thirty years have passed since this experience, the author tells us, and she believes she learned much about life from it, never doubting her romantic conclusions or the words-to-live-by that she presents throughout her narrative. Though the author originally wrote this book for adults, its popularity among junior high students speaks to its appeal. The world she describes is not the nature of "tooth and claw" or the survival of the fittest. It is a world in which humans can interact with nature through positive thoughts and energy, and those, in turn, can reunite a baby whale and its presumably loving mother. n Mary Whipple



5. What should have been a SHORT story, was stretched into a book, and it didn't work for me. Not only did I think that the author inserted too many other incidents into a couple of hours, but she also threw in too many similes.

5 comments about House of Testosterone: One Mom's Survival in a Household of Males.

1. As the only female in a household of males (even the dog) I totally identified with this book.
   
   I sat down to read the first chapter and ended up finishing the book in one sitting. I felt compelled to read on to find out about the next escapade, all the while comparing it to the chaos in my own home and before I knew it several hours had passed and I had finished the entire book.
   
   Sharon very cleverly uses her skill with words to pull a multitude of emotions from her reader. I did an awful lot of laughing out loud while reading House of Testosterone but also found myself crying several times. It was also very reassuring to see that my house is "normal" well, as normal as it can be with all these guys in it.



2. I am here to offer a different point of view. I am not a mother, but the father of only one daughter. I found this book to be so true to life
   because I could see myself in many of the situations the author describes, especially the chapters "I can Fix it Myself" and "You Look Fine" It is fun to read even if you only have a few minutes, but I found it hard to put down.



3. This book is humorous and heartfelt. As I was reading it, there were moments where I wanted to cry or just burst out laughing. This is a good book to read whether you are a mother or not. It is very informative, right on point about males all round, regardless of their age. I will use this book as my guide to raising my two sons. It is a must buy for yourself or as a gift.



4. THis book was humorous, but also poignant at times. Having three boys myself, I could relate to many of the situations in the book. It is also a book you can read a little at a time, and read over again for a laugh. I was actually laughing out loud! This also makes a good gift book for moms with boys. I have bought them for many of my friends. Also, I enjoyed going to the author's website. Lilly G



5. As a single woman whose major contact with men is in the dating scene, I found this book to have smart, funny and illuminating insights into the male mind and male behavior. Whatever the age of the male, the differences between the sexes provide for poignant, heartfelt and hilarious moments. While the author's incidents are located within the realm of one specific family, I couldn't help smiling or laughing at how much it strikes a chord with my own, very different life. Whether you're a mom or not, women will appreciate her honest and humorous look at one woman's struggles with mankind!

5 comments about Marie Antoinette: The Journey.

1. Hard to get into. The movie is better except the movie leaves out one of the children and I am sure alot more. Maybe onday I will be able to get into it.



2. I really liked this book and finished it in record time--even though I knew how MA's story would end, it was fascinating to see that she was not entirely the arrogant and unapproachable Queen of lore. Yes, she made some mistakes and was extravagant at times, but certainly no more extravagant than previous Queens of France. Minimally any reader will say after reading this book that it is sad she was a Queen who did not pay more attention outside the walls of Versailles so that she might be less oblivious--but even then, I'm not sure she could have escaped her doomed fate.
   
   The treatment of the family during their captivity and particularly the treatment of their children is startling (not to mention the legendary treatment of the Princesse de Lamballe). In the end, I'm not sure what was worse--the royal family or the revolutionaries.



3. Over halfway through in a just a few days. I love this book! I'm definitely looking into purchasing others by the author.



4. If you are looking for a good histoical book on Marie Antoinette, this is it! It is well written and provides plenty of historical facts. Fraser also manages to paint a rather sympathetic portrait of Marie Antoinette as a human rather than a royal, without blurring the lines of history vs. folklore.



5. I have the DVD of this gorgeously filmed fantasy and wanted the book for my recent trip to Versailles and the Chateau's of the Loire Valley for bedtime reading. LOVE it!

5 comments about The Hiding Place (Deluxe Christian Classics).

1. This book is beautiful inside and out. The outside is burgundy leather? bound with gold stamped letters. Very classic looking. The story itself is so well written, Corrie ten Boom draws you into her family. To hear how God worked miracles in spite of German occupation and concentration camps, and the lack of money and resources, was very faith building. I highly recommend this book.



2. I was fortunate to meet Corrie Ten Boome in Rome, Ga. when she gave a lecture! Later, My husband took me to Haarlem, the Netherlands to see her home,when I was going thru a particularly hard time in my life, as he had heard me speak of her and her brave story so many times! She and her family, her sister, showed the most extraordinary courage and strength of faith in the most horrible circumstances. Her father's explanation of death:..."Just like I gave you your tickets, The Lord gives us our ticket when we get on the train"....an example of how he always gave his daughters their tickets right before they got on the train to Amsterdam....A must read.. Different aspects will mean different things to different people. Also, as I have re=read it over the years, it has given different encouragement to me in different circumstances. Please don't miss this book.



3. I laugh at the kids saying it's boring. "Well my school made me read it and I didn't like it! Waahh!"
   
   My school made me read it(twice I think) and I love(d) it. I can see the reason for one saying it's boring, but this a AUTOBIOGRAHPY. Not always life moves so fast. Never once did I think it was boring. Buy it.



4. this is my favorite book of all time. corrie ten boom is one of the best examples of a human being expressing christian love.



5. Inspirational, powerful account of God working in the life of one who put her trust in Him no matter what!

1 comments about Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching.

1. In 1893, the "Chicago Inter-Ocean", a mainstream metro newspaper, commissioned 30 year old Ida Wells to investigate a crime. A black man, accused of murdering two white girls, had been mutilated, burned to death and left hanging from a telegraph pole. Wells made the trip, assumed the identity of the dead man's widow, tracked down eyewitnesses and published her findings in detail.
   
   The Introduction describes the history of lynching and serves as a backdrop to Wells's crusade against lynching:
   
   "The origin of the term "lynching," according to James E. Cutler, author of "Lynch-Law" (1905)[a full copy can be found on Google Books], the first scholarly text on the subject, is attributed to Charles Lynch, a Virginia justice of the peace (and brother of the founder of Lynchburg). Lynch established informal, extra-legal citizen juries during the Revolutionary War years when official courts were few and traveling to them through British-occupied territories was perilous. The common sentence for those found guilty--mostly horse thieves and Tories--was thirty nine lashes with a whip. By the 1830s, when southern abolitionism reached its height, lynching was associated more with those who threatened the slave order. Following the Civil War, the practice became more murderous with the bloody struggle for power among northern federalists, Confederates, and newly enfranchised black men.
   
   "However, it wasn't until 1886, when increasing numbers of rural blacks migrated to southern cities, that the number of African Americans lynched exceeded that of whites: a trend that continued even as blacks became increasingly disenfranchised; had largely eschewed their political aspirations in favor of building institutions, acquiring wealth, and eliminating ignorance; and ex- Confederates had regained control of their state governments. Both Wells and Cutler cited what were surely conservative estimates by the Chicago Tribune, which reported that 728 persons were lynched between 1882 and 1891, the majority of them African American men. The statistics further showed that less than a third had been accused of rape, much less guilty of it."
   
   In 1893 Wells was established as a black journalist, co-editor and part-owner of the "Memphis Free Speech". A white mob seized the three black men and killed them in a railroad yard duplicating wounds suffered by three white deputies. Wells urged her black readers: "Save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts." Memphis blacks took her advice and departed by the thousands to the West, and those who stayed behind boycotted streetcars and quit their jobs. Business owners panicked and commerce "came to a standstill," Wells would recall with some satisfaction.
   
   Wells used the "Free Speech" to respond to an editorial supporting lynching. The South was menaced by the "horrible and bestial propensities" of black men, whose seething ambition was to catch a white woman alone. Lynching, the paper argued, was a defensive act by noble whites protecting chaste women from depraved blacks. Wells replied that, according to her own investigations, some lynchings involved black men who were guilty of nothing more than having had consensual sex with a white woman. If lynchings were sometimes proof of a white woman's desire for a black man, Wells argued, then the future lynching of blacks by white men would lead others to draw conclusions "which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women."
   
   Despite the firestorm created by her editorial, Wells continued her fight. She gave 102 lectures in Britain to bring international pressure on the U.S. She helped to introduce anti-lynching legislation in six states. Eventually, Wells married a successful Chicago attorney, had four children, wrote in defense of prisoners on death row, opened a reading room and social center in Chicago, ran for public office, and was part of a contingent that met with President Woodrow Wilson in 1913 to protest civil-service segregation.
   
   Ida Wells Clubs opened in cities across the country, and benefactors sent money to her causes. But the women's suffrage movement generally avoided Wells because its leaders didn't want to alienate Southern women. Black ministers asked her to mute the sexual themes in her writing about lynching and women's rights, and W.E.B. Du Bois took credit for excluding her from NAACP leadership positions. Government agents investigated her for treason after passage of the Espionage Act of 1917.
   
   This is a carefully researched biography, describing a real American heroine, and her efforts to stop a terrible crime. I found that it added a very useful dimension to Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells.

5 comments about Autobiography of a Face.

1. I originally had to read this book for a school project, and I wasn't expecting much since I usually don't find non fiction very interesting. But this book wasn't bad, it was pretty good. This girl Lucy, at nine, crashes into another kid's head playing a game during recess, and her face begins to hurt way more than it should and then swells up. She goes to the doctor and she finds out she has a tumor in her jaw, and that its cancerous. However, this book is really not about Lucy's cancer. It's about her life and the effect that the cancer has on it. At first, she really doesn't mind that much. She likes all the special attention that she is getting, and doesn't care what she looks like, even with one whole third of her jaw removed. Later however, she becomes very insecure about her face and becomes obsessed with multiple reconstructive surgeries that never work, convinced that she can never be loved with a face like hers. She finds it easier to spend time with the horses she works with at her high school job than with people. She eventually gets her face fixed (somewhat), but she thinks it's all wrong, that its not really her. I liked this because it was informative without being "whiney" and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys biographies about people overcoming adversity. It is also a good book for high school girls who are insecure about their looks, because it shows them how lucky they really are to be "whole". I suppose something like what happened to Lucy can really mess you up, but she comes out fine in the end because she learns how to deal with her appearance issues. It's a good book.



2. In Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy has written--not remembered-- a story based on her myriad attempts to attain a widely accepted form of physical beauty. (This is noted and emphasized in the book's Afterword by Ann Patchett, a longtime friend of Grealy's.) Why this fact is important to Grealy and, vicariously, to Patchett is explicitly stated: Grealy wanted to be appreciated for her writing, not for surviving what was certainly a hellish ordeal. What Patchett also makes clear in the Afterword (and in Truth & Beauty: A Friendship) is that Grealy's book was not made a bestseller due to her beautiful sentence struture. Nor was it due to some sweeping truth about life evidenced in what I must refer to as Grealy's novel. Instead, Autobiography of a Face sold well because people wanted to read about Grealy's pain. Real, remembered pain; not fictional pain. Real hospital visits, real operations, real life. The questions asked of Grealy at her readings make this obvious. By writing a fictionalized account of what happened, Grealy gave her fans a taste of what they wanted, a taste that they couldn't conceive of as fiction, because without that element of truth, the book falls apart.
   
   Patchett claims that Autobiography should stand as great literature outside its voyeuristic appeal. Indeed, Lucy Grealy was an accomplished poet in her lifetime, a feat that very few can claim without some degree of nepotism or croneyism (although I'm sure the Iowa Writers' Workshop didn't hurt). Unfortunately, the beauty and elegance of form so easily found in her verse does not translate to her prose. Her sentences, while by no means awkward, are not stunning, not moving. She could be sitting with her peers, casually relating the events of her life-- but, as she insisted at the anecdotal reading Patchett describes in the Afterword, Autobiography is not an autobiography. It is fiction. And, as fiction, it is nothing more than a laundry list of voluntary tortures, all in the name of love (or sex, or acceptance, depending on the stage of the narrator's life). The climax, as it were, is but a comfortable murmur after a grotesque surgical storm.
   
   Grealy's life story is phenomenal and heartbreaking, but only because the tale is her own. No fictional character can command our sympathies as readily as flesh and blood. For Grealy to insist that we judge her novel outside of its truth is for her to strip the book of its power-- to render it incomplete, a face struggling desperately to find a body.



3. a little wrinkled, but the text is what matters and it is a great read.... if you are into depressing stories....



4. IMPRESSIONS:
   This was a good book, moving and engaging. Though you would think that it was the battle with cancer itself which would prove troublesome, perhaps because of the young age at which she underwent this struggle, we see that it the resulting effects are what truly impacted Grealy's life.
   
   Her book is insightful even for those who have not had to undergo the extraordinary struggles that she faced. The desire to be loved and feel special, to want to stand out in a singular and unique way and yet not be ridiculed, but rather adored, the simple joy that comes from being able to look at someone and know that they are looking back and see you and know you and understand you, loving you all the while, these emotions run throughout this book and would echo with anyone who has not always felt loved or accepted, who has doubted their worthiness.
   
   CRITICISMS:
   I did find that Grealy's siblings were quite absent throughout her narrative. She had four siblings, one of them a fraternal twin, and I found it quite odd that we don't really see that much of them or are given very clear depictions of them - especially her twin sister, Sarah, since all of the twins I've known have always been extremely close with their sibling.
   
   I also found her father's death kind of glossed over and was unable to understand the detachment with which it was written about. That she only visited her father once in the hospital while he was there for a few months seemed incomprehensible to me, but who am I to judge another's grief or how they display it? Grealy later writes of finally feeling the loss of her father, and the regret with which she writes of that moment when she lay in her hospital bed, pretending sleep, and he walked softly in, was very moving and could be acutely felt.
   
   As some other reviewers have mentioned, however, the book is entitled "Autobiography of a Face," and that is what you are getting.
   
   OF NOTE:
   As I was writing this review, I was doing some research online and found out that Lucy Grealy passed away in 2002. Apparently, the brief drug dependency mentioned in passing in "Autobiography of a Face" reemerged later in life and led to a presumed accidental drug overdose. She was close friends with Ann Patchett, author of "Bel Canto," and there has been some controversy surrounding Patchett's 2004 memoir, "Truth & Beauty," which recounts the friendship of the two authors (apparently Grealy's family objects to Patchett's portrayal of her).
   
   The article "Hijacked by grief," by Grealy's sister Suellen, which appeared in the August 7, 2004 edition of the Guardian (and can be found online) was enlightening not only on the family's reaction to Patchett's depictions of Lucy Grealy, but also on the Lucy Grealy herself, in that in an odd way it seemed to offer a missing piece of anything that might have been lacking in Grealy's own account. It greatly altered my previous opinion of Patchett and it also reminded me, both in regards to Patchett's memoir and Grealy's, that any narrative or autobiography writes of other people and that though what may be written is a truthful depiction of what the author felt and experienced, every person detailed has their own story, that somewhere where all of these accounts intersect is some semblance of accuracy and all we can do is understand the deficiency of our own portrayals and appreciate that which can be told.
   
   OTHER REVIEWS:
   (This is just a wrap-up of what other people seem to commonly find praise or fault with in this book.)
   
   Positive reviews mentioned the following ...
   - Beautifully written and inspiring
   - Difficult to read in its honesty and "heartbreaking words"
   - "As Grealy shows us in her memoir, she was never different from anyone else: she was always just as imperfect, and beautiful, as we are" (J. Babcock)
   - Evokes emotion and empathy, very thought-provoking
   - A candid story of the tragedy of cancer and how one woman was able to deal with it all at such a young age, but overcome it in the end
   - Accurate criticism of our society's obsession with beauty and looks and that these qualify and determine our worth and lovability
   
   Negative reviews mentioned the following ...
   - The book was a long diatribe of self-pity
   - She continually and singularly dwells on her own physical ugliness (disregarding the pain of others, that she should be thankful to be alive, etc.)
   - Not enough details on other aspects of Lucy Grealy's life were included, no outside story or information on her family, too "one-dimensional" etc.



5. Lucy Grealy said it best herself when fans asked her how she remembered everything in such detail. She said, "I didn't remember it. I wrote it." And the result is beautiful, haunting and oddly funny. Grealy delves into the dark with such wit that even descriptions of chemo-induced vomiting and the cruelties of adolescent boys become bearable. The great tragedy is that we lost her so soon...

5 comments about Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home.

1. I would have to say that the only way this book was ever published was by a connection Kim's rich friend Olivier had with the publisher. If you can get beyond despising the "heroine," you'll be lost in a tale that goes no where and is relatively uninteresting. There was nothing profound in her experience or in the writing. My suggestion: don't waste your time. If you want a good book about food and the author's experiences, read Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone.



2. I can't quite tell what to make of Kim Sunee's "Trail of Crumbs." As an adoptee, a food lover, and an aspiring writer, I see much of Sunee in myself--that pervading sense of rootlessness, the inability to feel like I truly belong anywhere, the tendency to fill the hole in my soul with food, and the need to exorcise my demons through writing. However, Sunee fails to communicate to her readers WHY these things bother her so much; it may seem obvious that it would upset her not to know her parents and not to feel a part of the world around her, but she would have been much more sympathetic had she explored her darker thoughts and feelings in more depth. Instead, we are left to interpret nightmares, snippets of memories, and random fantasies. Psychologically interesting, yes; sufficient to make it great literature? Not quite.
   
   The crux of this book is based on the contrast between the apparent richness of Sunee's life and her rather bleak inner landscape. By failing to draw any conclusions about what that contrast MEANS, why it is there in the first place, Sunee fails to do what I feel every book should do, however subtly: make a point. What real insight do we get into her mind, into Kim Sunee as an individual? We know her as an orphan (for all intents and purposes), as a lover, as a mistress, as a stepmother, as an American lost in Europe--but not as a fully actualized person. She keeps us at arm's length from truly getting to know her, just as she does her family, her lovers, her friends, and perhaps even herself.
   
   I tend to approach any memoir written by such a young person with skepticism, and this book is a perfect example why. It seems to me that Sunee is simply too young to be able to offer any real insight into her place in the world; while her experiences are undoubtedly valid, perhaps even universal in some respects, I still feel that Sunee may not be mature enough, either as a person or as a writer (or both), to be able to write a truly inspiring, moving memoir. Perhaps she should have written it after she had gained some perspective; as it is, the narrative jumps from scene to scene, year to year, language to language, without a sense of connectedness or purpose--most likely because its author has no insight into what the connection or purpose is in the first place.
   
   Sunee's book ended where it should have begun--at the first time in her life when she first gains any sort of insight into herself and her life. This memoir is a bottle of wine opened a few decades too soon, before its true depth and flavor have had a chance to develop and become truly great.



3. I am so disappointed in this book. I was given it after an enthusiastic tour through Peter Mayle's wonderful collection and along with a memoir by the enchanting Judith Jones.
   
   Sadly, I don't think I can even finish it. The story seems to wind so quickly, so eagerly, that the characters aren't developed (even Sunee's) and it feels hollow and desperate.
   
   I wish there were something in this story that would propel me forward with enthusiasm or even curiosity, but my reading time is minimal and sacred -- I'll be moving on to a more heartfelt, substantial read.



4. I had high hopes for this memoir but I was somewhat disappointed. As an adopted child, I was interested to read Sunee's experience but ultimately found her tale often superficial and self-indulgent. Most of her descriptions of her interactions with her adoptive parents come off as whiny and unsympatheitc. Sunee has lead a fascinating life so far and her recipes sound delicious even though their inclusion often seems arbitrary. The book is mediocre at best. Perhaps with time and little more maturity, Sunee can revisit these subjects in a more effective way.



5. I couldn't put this book down. One of my top 5 favorite reads ever! Kim Sunee is an amazing writer and I related to her story and search for self immediately. This book has inspired me beyond words. There are so many ways one can relate to Kim and her experiences, she is such a dynamic person and is so open with her readers that she becomes your close friend who you root for.