September 5, 2005
Here's a very sad story: a middle-class girl is working as a reporter at ABC, where she meets a handsome man from a famous family. They court, marry and become best friends with the husband's first cousin and his new wife. Abruptly, the reporter's husband is diagnosed with cancer. He dies, but not before the cousin and his wife (and her sister) die, too, in a senseless plane crash. This would be a heartbreaking story even if it weren't about Anthony Radziwill, nephew of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and about his and Carole's friendship with John and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. But because its publisher (and, presumably, the author) have decided not to market it as a "Kennedy book" but "a memoir of fate, friendship and love," it begs consideration on its literary merits. So here goes: Radziwill is a serviceable, if sentimental, writer. She is brave, especially when she describes how cancer became the third party in her marriage, and how she briefly flirted with infidelity. She also knows how to convey the essence of a person with small scenes and quotes (JFK Jr. holding his dying friend's hand and softly singing a song from their childhood; director Mike Nichols not calling but just coming to the hospital and handing out sandwiches to the nurses). Still, perhaps in Radziwill's effort to further the myth of its non-Kennedyness, much of this already short book feels padded—with scenes from the author's childhood and medical details about Anthony's treatment. Otherwise, much of Radziwill's writing approaches melodrama, particularly when she recounts that July 1999 night when the plane crashed. At one point, Radziwill scoffs at the "tragedy whores" who luxuriate in Kennedy trauma, and yet she seems to have been unable to resist contributing some crumbs to their feeding frenzy. (Sept. 27)
Correction:
The coauthor of How to Cook Your Daughter
, with Jessica Hendra (Reviews, Aug. 29), was misidentified. Blake Morrison is an American journalist for USA Today
.
October 24, 2005
With more than 60 years behind the lens, including a stint as a New Deal documentarian and more than two decades at Life
magazine, Parks is by acclamation the nation's most important African-American photographer. Film fans know him as the man who directed Shaft
, along with several other feature films and well-regarded documentaries, many of them focused on black urban life. Meant to accompany A Hungry Heart
, his fourth prose memoir (also a November book), this collection of Parks's straightforward, sincere verse plays up its links with his pictures, almost 50 of which adorn the book, from abstract photos of crystals and sunsets to closeups of soldiers and candids of people in need. The verse itself consists of clear and sometimes moving meditations on Parks's upbringing ("Momma's words refuse to die./ Instead they grow wings and soar"), on American history and on current events ("Forty killed in Basra today! Small children blown apart!") along with pithy advice from a now 90-year-old working artist: "Keep acting and thinking upward."