Carlos Fuentes is Mexico's leading contemporary writer and this while probably his most ambitious novel, is also his most amorphous—lacking any narrative action to give definition to the inchoate flux of ideas, images, and endless memories of a past which is at time collective, at times personal. The scene is Cholula, where Cortez once committed his battue of the Indians, now a "living death." But then all of this is death-directed ("To be dead waiting for eternity to put in its appearance, which it refuses to do, to go on, dead, waiting.") and the four characters assembled—over whom the "narrator,"—a sort of anarchic hipster presides—are all landlocked: Javier, who had written one little Foundation winning book; Elizabeth his wife who has been destroying him for years by demanding too much; Franz, a Nazi, with the survival guilt of the crematoria; and Isabel, a kicky chick ("All I'm looking for is orgasms."). The novel has a certain degenerative energy, but more often than not its fragmentation is close to anarchy which makes it a quite often penitential reading experience. Assured critical attention.
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 1967
ISBN: 0233980156
Page Count: 462
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1967
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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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