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    <name><![CDATA[Heidi]]></name>
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  <id type="integer">368584</id>
  <isbn>0375726209</isbn>
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  <title>
    <![CDATA[The Leopard Hat: A Daughter's Story]]>
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  <average_rating>3.72</average_rating>
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    <![CDATA[Valerie Steiker's poignant memoir limns with love the indelible impact  of her glamorous, adored mother, Gisèle, and her painful struggle to come to  terms with Gisèle's premature death from cancer in 1988, when Valerie was only  20. The book's marvelous opening pages portray a beautiful, privileged woman who  can't do her own hair and throws the entire household into disarray when  dressing to go out with her husband. Swathed in gowns, bedecked in jewels, and  always shod in high heels (even on her canvas boat shoes), Gisèle is the epitome  of a wealthy, sophisticated New Yorker. She's also a Belgian-born Jew who spent  the war years in hiding with her mother after her father was deported to  Auschwitz; the magical cocoon Gisèle spins for her daughters in their East Side  apartment is a creation of her will and imagination, her passionate desire to  give them the childhood she was denied. Steiker's luminous prose, vividly  evoking Gisèle's allure, makes palpable the void left by her loss. Only at the  end of a five-year romance launched just weeks after Gisèle's death does the  author realize, &quot;I had been desperately trying to hold on to my mother ... at  the expense of my growing more fully into myself.&quot; The chapters about Valerie's  postcollege years as a young writer and editor in Manhattan, though  well-written and intelligent, aren't quite as compelling as the ones that  tenderly chronicle her mother's life. This is Gisèle's book, and it's clear her  daughter wouldn't have wanted it any other way. <em>--Wendy Smith</em>]]>
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        <name><![CDATA[Valerie Steiker]]></name>
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    <average_rating>3.43</average_rating>
    <ratings_count>161</ratings_count>
    <text_reviews_count>45</text_reviews_count>
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  </authors>  <published>2002</published>
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  <date_added>Wed Jan 21 19:46:04 -0800 2009</date_added>
  <date_updated>Wed Jan 21 19:46:04 -0800 2009</date_updated>
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