A Nike Award–winning author travels through Eastern Europe, a place littered with the crumbling relics of communism, with inhabitants abandoned and seemingly frozen in time waiting for their future to begin.
Eschewing major European cities, Stasiuk (Fado, 2009, etc.) traveled east from his native Poland into the nearly deserted yet captivating landscapes of places off the usual tourist route, including Transylvania, Moldova, Slovenia, Romania, Ukraine and Albania. Translated from Polish, the spellbinding language captures the author’s piercing insights with painful clarity; Stasiuk refuses to soften what he sees, hears and smells, providing a dynamic postcard of his travels. Readers will be rapidly ensnared by his recounting of a curiously exotic and complex region of the world—villages where, “[i]f you took away the cars, everything would be as it was a hundred year ago,” where “monotony suggests eternity.” Peppered with haunting landscapes, the terrain contains a history of brutal wars and rapacious dictators. Driving through Slovenia, the author came across a dark valley, the largest unmarked cemetery in a country where “in the summer of 1945, Tito’s Communists murdered in this place, without a trial or witnesses, prisoners who had been handed over to them by armies of the Allies.” In Albania, the author encountered a nation lacking the resources to melt down the 600,000 bunkers built between 1944 and 1985, during the regime of Enver Hoxha. “When the highway turned toward Tirana, the bunkers began,” he writes. “Gray concrete skulls, jutting a meter above the ground, gazed with eyes that were black vertical slits. They looked like corpses buried standing.” Whether writing about gypsies, the ancient bond between beasts and humans or the threadbare currency of Moldova, Stasiuk’s language and sharp observations reveal a discerning intellect. A mesmerizing, not-to-be-missed trek through a little-visited region of the world.
Pub Date: June 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-15-101271-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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