Sad, almost grim, rewarding.
Award-winning poet Williams (Repair, 1999) looks back on his parents' unhappy marriage, a mix of personalities that was
guaranteed from the start to produce some sparks—and did. Williams's family was in most ways a typical middle-class Jewish family of the post-Depression, postwar era. His father was a businessman who achieved success only relatively late in life, transforming the family's circumstances from dire need to relative comfort. An imposing figure, Dad was a stern and uncompromising man who, by his own choice, never apologized to anyone—a fiercely unhappy fellow. Mom was a lovely but utterly self-involved woman of great fragility, someone who never quite adjusted either to deprivation or sufficiency. Williams opens his slender memoir with a recollection of his first words to his father's dead body, "What a war we had," leaving readers to expect a sordid tale of incest or abuse—yet, mercifully, the family history is a surprisingly conventional one, littered with the kind of little battles that everyone has experienced. Williams explores these skirmishes with considerable fairness to all the participants and that, too, is a nice change of pace from the standard-issue grudge-bearing family memoir of today. Told in a series of short takes—no chapter is longer than four or five pages—this is a thoughtful excavation of ordinary family life, a refreshing change from the usual tiresome dirty laundry. Williams brings a poet's sensibility to the world of familiar people and common pursuits, and he is capable of carrying an unusual amount of insight into the psychology of family life. As more boomer-generation writers age (and as more of their parents die), we can expect to see an ever-growing number of such memoirs—but probably very few of them will be better written than this.
Sad, almost grim, rewarding.Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-374-19984-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
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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