A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

From The Week of December 19, 2011

Revolution is an uncontrollable beast. We needn't look any further than the recent Arab Spring to divine this much. Once the will of the people to be free, of tyrants and tormenters, of oppression and corruption, has been ignited, no one can say where it will end. For no one can steer a revolution. It has a life of its own, as the gripes of the masses are vividly expressed and must needs run their course. Some revolutions, like the one executed by colonial Americans against the British empire, end in peace, in this case the construction of a mighty nation that would go on to rule the 20th century. But others, like the French Revolution which descended into the mass-slaughter of Frenchmen by other Frenchmen, are not so tidily concluded. In fact, these go on to create lasting wounds that take generations to heal, assuming they heal at all. It is this latter type Mr. Dickens chose to explore in this, his most memorable and difficult work.

In the latter decades of the 18th century, France underwent a sociopolitical convulsion the likes of which the modern world had never seen. Beset by disastrous economic conditions which, at one point, necessitated that french workers devote most of their wages to purchasing staples as basic as bread, the country finally erupted in a revolution that tore down the French monarchy and established, in its stead, notionally democratic rule. However, through arrogance, ignorance, mismanagement and the petty settling of scores, the French democracy, instead of accreting towards stability as the United States had done less than a decade earlier, devolved into nihilistic chaos known today as the Terror which took the lives of 40,000 French citizens and launched the age of politically motivated mass-killing.

Against the backdrop of this national nightmare stands Charles Darnay. The nephew of a French marquis assassinated for his abject cruelty, Darnay somehow grew up a man of virtue in a world of unregulated privilege. Rejecting both the teachings and the savagery of his uncle, Darnay falls in love with Lucie Manette, the Anglicized daughter of a French doctor who, after spending 18 years in the Bastille as a victim of the crimes of the nobility, is an eccentric, neurotic mess. Despite this trauma, Dr. Manette, who now lives in England as well, blesses Darnay's marriage to his daughter which lasts only a handful of happy years before Darnay is drawn, by his conscience, back to France- where he is identified as a former nobleman, arrested for presumed crimes and thrown headlong into a show trial that will surely see him executed.

Ensnared in the insanity of the Terror, Darnay nonetheless has powerful advocates fighting for him, advocates who believe in his goodness. But the French bloodlust is a vicious and demanding mistress. And nothing short of a death will satisfy her.

Though A Tale of Two Cities concerns, in the main, the French Revolution and the extent to which its indiscriminate violence entrapped countless innocence in its murderous wake, it is, at its heart, two tragic love stories. The one Mr. Dickens lavishes the most attention upon is Darnay and Lucie whose innocent happiness is sundered by the savagery of French patriots who, having killed so often and so mercilessly, have lost their way and their sanity. Here, though the author is none-too-subtle with his foreshadowing, Mr. Dickens successfully portrays the divisiveness of discord and the extent to which it encourages its most violent, human practitioners to arrogantly presume the guilt of those who only appear to be guilty. But though the novel spends far less time with it, it is the second love story that drives both the plot and serves as the harshest critique of authoritarian rule.

It concerns the decimation and the eventual destruction of an entire family at the hands of a vicious nobleman so transfixed by his own pleasure, and so secure in his own superiority, that he gives not a second thought to crimes as profound as rape and murder. These injustices light a vengeful fire in the hearts of peasants who are so determined to gain their revenge, to right abominable wrongs, that they overcompensate for their loss and fuel the very nihilism that destroys the democratic state the French Revolution promised to deliver.

These intertwined tragedies allow Mr. Dickens to make potent points about human nature. Firstly, people are not cruel in a vacuum. They are either made cruel by a system that allows them to be so, or they are driven to it by cruelty done to them. Secondly, and more importantly, once that cruelty is done, how can it be redeemed? How can a sin, or a lifetime of sins, be rectified? Absolved? Or can they be taken back?

A Tale of Two Cities is a difficult novel shackled by dated prose. It cannot be said to be an enjoyable experience. But the extent to which it is a rumination on revolution, its social, political and economic causes, and the myriad ways in which humans react to these, it is wonderfully poignant. A slog, but there are diamonds to be mined here, mined and treasured. (3/5 Stars)

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

From The Week of December 19, 2011

Though the Christmas season is far from perfect, it presents those of us in the West with an annual opportunity to make merry with, and feel grateful for, our loved ones. Yes, the commercialization of the season has drained away some of Christmas' simple joys, and certainly we all have relatives we'd rather avoid during this yearly celebration, but the fact remains that there is no other time of year in which, for a matter of weeks, we all, collectively and simultaneously, are in the mood to smile, to express our affection for those dearest to us, and to revisit memories of years past in which merriment was had, traditions laid down and bonds forged in a common desire to be happy. This universal joy has value; life is, after all, hard. Without the calendar's reminder to slow down and to appreciate what we have, it's doubtful we ever would. Beyond the social criticism, this is the message of universality encoded in Mr. Dickens' Christmas classic. It should never be forgotten.

Having inspired countless films and stories, A Christmas Carol, originally published in 1843, is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a pugnacious and miserly businessman who, in spite of his many successes, is determined to be a crass and cheerless man. Despite having a family to delight in and a prosperous business to take pride in, Scrooge cannot shake his pettiness which drives him to shun the poor, to overlook the worthy and to revel, even celebrate, the selfishness that has made him a cold-hearted loner. Not content with holding these corrosive opinions, Scrooge willingly voices them to everyone he encounters, doing his best to infect them with his dour cynicism.

However, for all of Scrooge's efforts at darkness, this Christmas, the seventh since the unmourned death of his business partner, Jacob Morely, is going to be unlike any he has experienced before. For this year, Scrooge is plagued by restless ghosts who entrap him and force him to revisit his misspent life. Pulling him into his own past, the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future show him those he failed to love, those his cruelty harmed, and, most importantly, those who will not mourn his passing. Chastened and frightened by the prospect of dying alone, Scrooge endeavors to mend his ways before it is too late.

Though Mr. Dickens was a talented author and an effective humorist, his best works are those in which his social criticism is sharpest. In this, A Christmas Carol is as subtle as a sledgehammer. With Scrooge, Mr. Dickens makes no bones about his contempt for the tight-fisted and unsympathetic upperclasses, their superiority, their smugness and their unwillingness to take responsibility for both their own actions and the suffering of the masses it is within their power to sooth. Instead, the wealthy tend to credit themselves with their successes and to devalue the contributions of others so that they might proudly stand alone, sneering down upon the struggling masses.

We all are entitled to live as we choose, to be as miserly and as cruel as we wish, but actions have consequences. At the end of life, when a poor, happy man and a rich, miserly man are dying, when they are about to leave behind all the pleasures and the pains of this world, they must know that none of their life's possessions can go with them, none of their baubles, none of their fortunes. If nothing materialistic can journey with the soul to face whatever is to come, then all that matters, in life, is the legacy we leave behind: the deeds we do, the lives we change, the promises we keep or break. At the extremity of life, this is how the dying are remembered by the living, the relationships, not the stuff. And this is what makes Christmas and Mr. Dickens' fable so powerful. They both force us to see what is important and what is materialistic, what is sacred and what is profane. They make us see that the celebration of our loved ones is far more valuable and lasting than the life of a scrooge.

Lovely work. As pointed as it is delightful. (4/5 Stars)

Rubican by Tom Holland

From The Week of December 19, 2011

Of the thousands of nations that have risen and fallen in human history, only a special few have shaken off the yoke of mediocrity to expand into superpowers, states of unrivaled might capable of engendering fear and envy in all those who must consort and compete with them. These superpowers, past and present, have left legacies of culture and science, industry and technology, that have nourished their descendants. However, they have left behind warnings as well, stories of economic, political and personal excess that helped to ignite their downfalls.

Perhaps each superpower is unique unto itself, a singular entity enlivened by a singular people and plagued by singular problems, in which case autopsying the corpses of past superpowers is pointless. But what if all superpowers are fundamentally the same? They are, after all, populated and driven by humans, animals with the same genes, the same evolutionary histories, the same weaknesses. If they are all fundamentally the same, then history is endowed with powers to predict the future. In which case, current superpowers should take note of Mr. Holland's Rubicon for it has encapsulated the fall of freedom.

Though Rome managed to remain a republic for more than five centuries before collapsing into empire, its ultimate and destructive fate, argues Mr. Holland, a British author, was written into its very nature. Rome was founded on the notion that no one man is worthy of divine or monarchical exultation, that, while talent may be found to run deeper in some than in others, the most that man may aspire to be is first among his fellows. To reach any higher is to invite both tyranny and the wrath of the gods. This idea sustained Rome for centuries, working well enough to keep the republic alive. But when a succession of foreign enemies troubled Rome, causing its leading lights to adopt increasingly desperate measures to counter what they considered to be existential threats, this noble idea was first tested and then shattered by the desire among Romans for a hero to arise and save the republic in its darkest hours.

In the last 200 years of the Roman republic, many men vied for the honor of being Rome's savior. First came the Gracchi, brothers who attempted to reform Rome from within its existing institutions. But when the system stifled them, it fell to Rome's military heros to bring change. Marius and Sulla fought for and over Rome, causing a bloody civil war that laid down an example of dictatorial rule that Pompey Magnus and Julius Caesar happily followed. Sixty years of bloody, internal conflict, of plots and counter plots, of dictators and disbanded senates that finally culminated in the assassination of Julius Caesar, the end of the republic and the rise of a new Rome under Augustus, its last savior. These events leave us with one unavoidable conclusion; those who fought to save the Republic ended up destroying it.

Rubicon is a vivid history of the final century and a half of the Roman Republic told through the deeds of its prime movers. Mr. Holland's lively prose keeps the reader thoroughly engaged while he conveys a wealth of information on Rome's culture and customs, its religions and institutions, its seductions and its sins. He pleasingly balances the portraits of his Roman actors against the kings and rebels who threatened them from every side. But perhaps his greatest achievement, here, is in conveying the extent to which Romans eventually lost faith in their government and their constitution.

We hold our most treasured laws to be sacred and inviolate because to break them is to end their power forever. If the rule of law is suspended even once, the people will never be the same. For even when the rule of law is restored, they will not believe in it for they know that whenever the next crisis strikes, the rule of law will be suspended once more and they will suffer the consequences. There are certain truths and ideals that cannot be trampled without being broken. Unfortunately for Rome, powerful aristocrats, glory-seeking military heroes, and the corrupted politicians who enabled them both, succeeded in trampling all of Rome's sacred ideals. In doing so, they fractured their republic into warring factions while simultaneously draining away the people's faith in her institutions. War, death, decay, dissolution... Societies cannot exist without the faith of its citizens.

Though this is history at its grimmest, it is lively and superbly told. Mr. Holland does breeze over some of the more earth shattering events in Rome's final decades, but an excellent primer for anyone seeking to understand why Rome is so often compared to the United States. Similarities abound... Well-done. (4/5 Stars)

The Go-between by L. P. Hartley

From The Week of December 12, 2011

There are no wounds more damaging than those suffered as a child. For the young lack the armor possessed by the old, that particular toughening of skin and spirit that results from an accumulation of life's experiences. Adults can contextualize pain because they have endured it before and know it will pass, allowing peace to return at some future time. Children lack this perspective. To them, a wound may well last forever, or may well be the end of the world. They simply lack the knowledge to believe otherwise. Mr. Hartley has penned a wonderfully nostalgic novel and carried it to a moving conclusion, but it is providing this reminder, that we carry forward our childhood wounds, that his novel is gloriously and grievously potent.

Sparked by the rediscovery of a child's box of trinkets, The Go-between is an old man's ruminations on the most pivotal year of his life, 1900, when he was an innocent boy of 12. Colorless by nature, Leo Colston uses these mementos of his adolescence, chiefly a well-worn diary he once kept, to reflect upon his childhood, revealing in the process that Leo the younger was far different in temperament than Leo the elder. Where the latter is taciturn and grim, the former is spirited, energetic and care free, anticipating the life before him as much as he does the 20th century which holds so much promise. How did it come to pass that the same man could have possessed such different personalities at different stages of his life?

For an answer, Leo plunges us into the heat of the British summer of 1900 where, fresh off a difficult year at boarding school, young Leo accepts an invitation to summer with the Maudsleys, the well-to-do family of his schoolfriend, Marcus. While at Brandham Hall, a grand structure that once was the family home of the local viscount, Leo overcomes the shyness brought about by his relative poverty to capture brief moments of local glory by showcasing his voice at a concert and his glove in a cricket match. But as much as these pleasures sustain him, it is the devastating crush he has on Marian Maudsley, the elder sister of Marcus, that consumes all, turning else into pale remembrances. Leo will agree to do anything the lovely Marian wishes of him; serving as her little messenger boy -- carrying notes back and forth between herself and Ted burgess, a tenant of Brandham hall -- is nothing. But when it becomes clear that these notes are the keys to an inappropriate relationship between Marian and farmer Ted, Leo tries to withdraw. Marian is having none of it, though, and so Leo is forced to continue as the go-between, never imagining the doom his turn as Mercury might bring.

Originally published in 1953, The Go-between builds slowly to a wrenching conclusion. A classic of 20th century British literature, it is best remembered for its opening line: "the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." And yet, Mr. Hartley's novel is far more memorable as both a poignant and a devastating return to the memories and the wounds of childhood where formative experiences, for good or ill, shape us into the people we become. It is not too much to say that Leo is shattered by what befalls him at Brandham Hall in that fateful summer. He senses disaster's approach and even tries to avoid it. But falling prey to the passions of others, he cannot avoid onrushing events and is swallowed whole by them. His 12-year-old mind cannot grasp the complications of love and sex, of social classes and gender roles. He is an innocent, thoughtlessly taken up and discarded by fate and the Maudsleys, both of which expect him to understand and recover. But he does not and he cannot. For there are some introductions to life so harsh, so painful, that they cannot be overcome.

With its meandering plot, its preoccupation with symbols, its flirtation with the Zodiac and its exultation in nostalgia, The Go-between is slow to seize the reader's attention. But when the heat of the summer of 1900 finally proves too much for Leo and those for whom he has agreed to play postman, Mr. Hartley's piece explodes into an emotional, conflagrational conclusion that rends the heart. The innocence of youth, when lost, cannot be reclaimed. With a kind of gentle brutality, the author brings this lesson home. It will not be forgotten... (4/5 Stars)

Arrows of The Night by Richard Bonin

From The Week of December 12, 2011

What forces shape a nation's policies? Is it the will of its people bound together in common cause and cultural background? Is it the nation's media whose coverage of national issues helps mold the conversation? Perhaps it's the politicians who seek to satisfy all constituencies as a means of holding onto their preeminent power and influence. Most often, it is likely that all three primary forces have their role to play in the shaping of events, each balancing the other in a delicate dance of interlocking orbits the gestalt of which prevents a nation from skewing too far off course. But once in a great while, the dance is ignored, bypassed by a single force strong enough, clever enough, and manipulative enough to overpower the wisdom, the credulity and the common sense of a nation's leaders, all of whom should know better. Napoleon managed it through cunning and popular opinion. Hitler managed it through anger and manufactured outrage. Will the 21st century remember Ahmed Chalabi alongside these men of influence? Arrows of The Night suggests it well might.

Mr. Bonin, a producer for 60 Minutes, chronicles here the difficult, dramatic and destructive life of Ahmed Chalabi. The scion of a wealthy Iraqi family forced into exile by Saddam Hussein's rise to power in the 1960s, Ahmed weathered the isolation of boarding school in Britain, received his doctorate in mathematics in America, earned his financial stripes as a banker in Jordan and established himself as a man of intelligence and refined tastes all without a land to call home. Even more remarkable, he ascended to international success without the benefits of wealth his family had once enjoyed when, prior to Hussein's rise, they were allies of Iraq's royal family. Ahmed an exile, a self-made man, a success with a burning passion that no amount of personal achievement could sate. He wanted Saddam Hussein destroyed.

Setting out on a 20-year mission, Ahmed Chalabi rallied dissident Iraqis, seduced Neoconservatives, recruited US congressmen, and positioned himself for CIA assistance all in the singleminded desire to consign Saddam Hussein to history and replace him with a CIA-lead Iraq helmed by Ahmed Chalabi. Though his odyssey would experience numerous, ruinous ups and downs -- there appears to have been no bridge he was not willing to burn in the actualization of his goal, a fact which nearly found him barred from the halls of power --, he was ultimately successful in convincing the government of the United States to go to war in Iraq in 2003 and finish, there, what they failed to do 12 years earlier, to topple a tyrant from his throne and replace him with Ahmed Chalabi and the tenuous hope of democracy in the most unstable part of the world. He didn't sit in on the national security meetings; he didn't give the orders; he didn't have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks without which a war in Iraq would have seemed foolish. Nonetheless, he was there to capitalize on every opportunity, to push every button, to charm every powerbroker and to twist every arm in the realization of a dream 40 years in coming.

Arrows of The Night is a brilliant biography of an exceptional man and the flawed character that ultimately destroyed him. Drawing on interviews with Chalabi, along with conversations with politicians, powerbrokers and intelligence officers who dealt with him, Mr. Bonin paints a masterful and convincing portrait of a man so driven by a singular desire to restore his family's honor and position in Iraqi society that he is consumed by it. Ahmed Chalabi forgot need's most important lesson, that the stronger we want something, the more we are willing to compromise ourselves, our beliefs, our morals, even our friendships, in order to seize it. As humans, We are not strong enough, much less sufficiently self-aware, to indulge our needs without making sacrifices which is why we do not journey alone, why we have friends and allies to travel with us and keep us in line. Ahmed Chalabi was subsumed by his desire and there was no one there to stop him.

But as much as this work is a success as a biography, it is also a useful and potent glimpse into the workings of government and how it too is compromised by its wants. From the Neocons who believed so powerfully in their dogmas that they were willing to squander American lives and treasure to prove their eeeeerighteousness to the politicians who bring about so much destruction for the want to do half-hearted good, the government of the United States, here, is revealed to be a gigantic web of influence pedaling wherein each player does his level best to advance his own agenda by trading favors and capitalizing on alliances. To whatever extent this grim tapestry of government is authentic, it is utterly disturbing in its complete absence of decency and reason. Policy must be shaped by facts, not by factions and their dogmas. Allow oneself to be guided by the latter and he will quickly find himself mired in a calamitous war from which there is no fiscal recovery.

As disturbing as it is riveting. An excellent read. (4/5 Stars)

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

From The Week of December 12, 2011

Though their particulars very, every religion, the acknowledgement of and adherence to the divine, is based on a set of sacred rules that must be honored by its followers. For these rules are not only mechanisms by which a faith's clergy maintain power and influence, they are the means by which the followers of a given faith distinguish themselves from nonbelievers, from the less righteous. Take these rituals away and there's no means for any of the faithful to measure their adherence, to determine their level of godliness. They must be followed, obeyed, or the divine will withdraw his love.

But of course, some of these rules reveal themselves, in the fullness of time, to be rather silly. After all, most of our world's faiths laid down their laws in the dark and chaotic times prior to the rise of science and the rule of law which both invest the individual with secular logic and secular rights, neither of which play well with the amorphous whims of the insubstantial divine. So which laws should be obeyed and which ignored? Which did the divine intend to be unbreakable and which did he intend to be flexible? In this modern world, so shaped by scientific thought, these are the quandaries believers are left with. And fortunately, they have Mr. Jacobs, a fabulous eccentric, to turn to.

A liberal-minded New Yorker and writer for Esquire, Mr. Jacobs, Jewish by family history, sets out in The Year of Living Biblically to do precisely that, live for 365 days in full compliance with the laws of the Bible. Though this task soon proves to be impossible -- the good book is far too packed with arcane and conflicting laws to be obeyed 100 percent of the time --, the author, undaunted, endeavors to adhere to the many, many commandments as best he can. He stops shaving his face, blows a trumpet on the first day of every month, refuses to touch his unclean wife for seven days after her period, gives away ten percent of his income, and endows himself with the generosity of spirit and disposition his faith asks of him.

But though he is mostly successful in his efforts to follow the most obvious laws, there are many he doesn't know how to interpret. Was an eye for an eye literal or figurative? Was adultery actually adultery, or something else? Was thou shalt not kill actually intended as a constriction on killing? These and many other questions of context and metaphor, of interpretation and translation complicate Mr. Jacobs' journey, but never do they sway him from achieving his ultimate goal, understanding the book, its lessons and the impact it has on shaping the hearts and minds of its countless believers.

The Year of Living Biblically can be read in two ways, as a thoughtful and fruitful exploration of the bible and the lessons it has to offer, or as a devastating expose of the dogmas of the past which, to this day, are followed despite having been revealed as baseless. Though Mr. Jacobs himself clearly meant his investigation to take the path of the former -- he is ceaselessly earnest in his desire to explore the Bible with an honest heart and an open mind --, the doctrinal nonsense he unearths certainly encourages the reader into the arms of the latter view. So many of these rules have been banished, like embarrassing uncles at the family reunion, to the proverbial shed not because God has stopped caring about them but because they are either too arcane to be interpreted properly, or their requirements are too humiliating for their adherents to fulfil.

Not only must rules always be obeyed, all rules must always be obeyed. Otherwise, they should not be rules. There's plenty of evidence from secular society to convince us of the chaos of what results when rules are only enforced by some people some of the time. If we don't enforce all the rules all the time, only fools will follow them. In society, this begets lawlessness. In religion, this kills faith. For the whole enterprise hinges on the willingness of the divine to enforce his commandments. That Mr. Jacobs is able to run this experiment at all, and that it is so impossible to execute tells us all we need to know about the impotence of the divine.

This is a wonderful read, as entertaining for believers and secularists alike. For Mr. Jacobs has imbued his project with the twin spirits of humor and self-discovery which have rarely steered a writer wrong. Witty, fascinating, engaging and disturbing all... And certainly provides plenty of biblical trivia for dinner parties. (4/5 Stars)

Happy Accidents by Jane Lynch

From The Week of December 05, 2011

Though we christen it with a name and imbue it with godlike powers to manipulate events, Fate is nothing more than a human construct to explain the improbable and to soften up, for us, a deeper, more difficult truth. Life can turn on the smallest moments. The flight we didn't catch, the meeting we couldn't make, the promises we failed to keep... All of life's hiccups have the potential power to deprive us of vital opportunities while, perhaps, throwing up others in their place. After all, as much as we may disappoint some people with our failings, our mistakes may cause us to encounter lifelong loves who have the power to make us grateful for our foibles. Though one senses that Ms. Lynch is being far too modest when she credits this particular chaos for the good that has come to her, downplaying the depth of her own talent and determination, she has assembled some startling examples of just how much a life can change when one is least expecting it.

Born to affectionate parents of modest means, Jane Lynch spent much of her formative years firmly ensconced in the white-bred traditionalism of the American midwest which, for a child of the 70s, endowed with a theatrical spirit, was a poor match. She was a dreamer, fixed on fame and fortune, living in a world that insisted its youth foreswear the risks of Hollywood stardom for the safety of a quiet, unremarkable life. Slaving away in a department store simply was not going to cut it. Her exclusion from this community was only enhanced when, as a teenager, she realized she was gay, a secret she'd feel forced to conceal for years to come until stints performing in New York, Chicago and L.A. imbued her with the confidence to be herself.

Finding herself less than a match for society's standards of beauty, success was fleeting for Ms. Lynch early on. Her earliest victories were limited to appearances in commercials and on the small-time comedy stage. But when one such commercial hurled her into the orbit of Christopher Guest, an award-winning director of feature films, her fortunes dramatically shifted. Suddenly, she was in a movie, a serious actor who would go onto feature in numerous big-screen comedies before finding ultimate and lasting success on Glee, a hit launched in 2009 with Ms. Lynch as the show's sharp-tongued villain. Along her journey, she acquires friends, allies, pets and a wife, all while seemingly leaving little by way of acrimony in her wake. This is a worthy achievement for anyone, let alone one who has reached for and grasped the stars.

Though Ms. Lynch keeps her readers at arms length, Happy Accidents is a fun romp through the world of a struggling performer, the soul cursed with many things to say and with no one to listen. She communicates with clarity the ups and downs of her profession, thrilling in its victories without ignoring the powerful loneliness of its failures. She leaves the reader cheering her on when she finally earns lasting success. But despite Ms. Lynch's winning charm, we are never truly allowed inside her world, or her head. The author is frank about her struggles with alcohol sparked by hiding herself in the Closet; she is open about her personal foibles which have lead her to push people away; she even includes a few anecdotes that must have been difficult for her to reveal to perfect strangers and perhaps she considers this enough sharing. But there is always a reserve, a protective veneer, a smile forced to hide what lies beneath, that is tangible throughout and prevents the reader from fully embracing the subject.

It must be painfully difficult for an intensely private person to confess her life's secrets, but these are why autobiographies are written, so that their writers can work through their own history and so that their readers can feel as though they understand what lies behind the public masks of people they will probably never meet. To the extent that Ms. Lynch conveys her warmth, her charm and her lovable flaws, she is, here, eminently successful. But to the extent that she allows us to know her, to understand her,she leaves something to be desired. On balance, a worthwhile read that left me wanting good to come to a kind-hearted person who worked hard for her achievements. (3/5 Stars)