Book Reviews

Bradley Weber on I-III

In Keep This Quiet! III, Margaret expands greatly on some of the things she only briefly discussed in the first two books. The connections between physics and the mind are fascinating and oddly reassuring. Pick up all three books for the full scope of Margaret’s story, but if you have a more scientific or (for the lack of a better term) spiritual bent, start with Keep This Quiet! III: Initiations. And if you have the chance to see Margaret speak, you owe it to yourself to go. —Bradley James Web...
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Joy Ayscue on the Series

The first time I met Margaret, she sat down beside me (or, was it the other way around?) in a meeting and immediately, I knew I wanted to get to know her. She had a certain presence...a "shining"...that was magnetic. The Universe must have been in agreement with my intuition, because over the years I was blessed to become her student and benefited greatly from her wise and loving teachings, but still, there was a certain mystery about her that was never revealed, for she vary rarely talks about ...
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Midwest Book Review on Keep This Quiet! III

This is the third and highly recommended title in Margaret Harrell’s outstanding Keep This Quiet! autobiographical series. A fascinating and very well written personal story, Keep This Quiet! III: Initiations is very highly recommended for both community and academic library collections. Also exceptionally commended are the first two volumes in this outstanding series, Keep This Quiet! My Relationship with Hunter S. Thompson, Milton Klonsky, and Jan Mensaert, and Keep THIS Quiet Too!  
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Midwest Book Review on Keep THIS Quiet Too!

I soon have to write a guest blog on relationships and this review gives me a good start. Relationships is at the crux of the Keep This Quiet! series, as this review of KTQ Too! from Midwest Book Review points out: Keep THIS  Quiet Too! is a real-life saga of living and learning with eyes and ears open.  At times adventurous, at times sensual, Keep THIS Quiet Too! hinges upon the  complexities of human relationships, especially the challenges posed by the  heart-wrenching feelings of love that ...
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Hstbooks.org on Keep THIS Quiet Too!

Keep THIS Quiet Too! My Thoughts. (Finally.) -HSTBooks.org Marty Flynn is in with a review and it’s very very gratifying that he sums the book up under “risktaking”: In this book Margaret goes an extra few steps to open her heart and lay bare. Having read the first volume the line was baited. Her words were jangling on the hook. I couldn’t help but bite and from the first few pages she reeled me in. Before long I’m immersed in her world. It looked to me like a world filled with constant risk. ...
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Rain Taxi Review on Keep This Quiet!

By W. C. Bamberger Keep This Quiet! opens with the question, “How does the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, manifest itself in the world, if not through people?” Margaret Harrell looks back at such manifestations in the forms of three writers she was involved with, aesthetically and romantically to various degrees, in the 1960s. These men were Jan Mensaert (a Belgian painter and poète maudit); Milton Klonsky (Greenwich Village intellectual and brilliant essayist); and Hunter S. Thompson (a c...
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San Francisco Book Review on Keep THIS Quiet Too!

It starts with a wedding. Margaret Harrell pledges her life and love to poet Jan Mensaert, through all the ups and downs (and further downs) of his tempestuous life. As creative and business opportunities come and go, Margaret maintains her yearly meet-ups with mentor Milton Klonsky and keeps up on the maniacal maneuvering of friend Hunter S. Thompson. These three men will come to define much of the coming decades for Margaret, even as she grows, changes, and emerges anew as her own person. Keep...
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Kirkus Indie Review of Keep This Quiet!

  Harrell’s memoir details her relationships with Hunter S. Thompson, Milton Klonsky and Jan Mensaert, and how these partners influenced her life by the way in which they lived their own. Harrell (Toward a Philosophy of Perception, 2005, etc.) becomes acquainted with the self-styled “Gonzo” journalist Thompson while helping to edit his first book, Hell’s Angels (1967). She meets the Belgian poet Jean-Marie (Jan) Mensaert by chance outside a coffeehouse in Marrakech, and she discovers New Yor...
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Martin Flynn on Keep This Quiet!

Keep This Quiet? Not Likely. Margaret Harrell’s “Keep This Quiet” is A Feast for the Gonzo Soul. September 24, 2011 There are folks who enjoy reading Hunter Thompson’s work and are happy to leave it there. Then there are those who want more. More being a need to know as much about Hunter’s process as possible, the nitty-gritty, who helped him?  Who influenced him? Call them freaks if that’s your pleasure, Gonzo freaks.I’m one. We are out there. Unashamedly. And we love to see new HST-related s...
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Rachel Escobar on Keep This Quiet!

  *****The Art of Complicated Relationships Margaret Harrell brilliantly illuminates the sentiments of three complicated relationships. This memoir is a unique exploration of Margaret’s memories, supplemented by letters from her three main characters. The letters allow the reader to become familiar with the men in a way that dialogue cannot. The heart-wrenching ambiguity of what is lost in translation is augmented by this form of conversation. Harrell’s writing is crisp and easy to follow...
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