Powerful, wrenching, illuminating, and lovely.
More than a dozen essayists struggle with illness, death, loss, love, and survival.
Henry (Writing/Emerson Coll.) believes these writers can “speak for us all, expressing thoughts that lie too deep for tears.” Not many readers, however, will complete this collection dry-eyed, for it moves from descriptions of the deaths of loved ones to expressions of loss to considerations of what remains. Debra Spark chronicles her sister’s fierce battles with cancer, and playwright William Gibson—in one of the volume’s most powerful pieces—describes the death of his mother: “Before our eyes the miracle went out of my mother.” Tess Gallagher writes about the death of her husband, Raymond Carver, who “used his poetry to flush the tiger from hiding.” Rebecca McClanahan concludes: “Emptiness does not contain the power to fill us.” In her essay on miracles, Ann Hood (see below) tells about a desperate trip to New Mexico to find some sacred “healing dirt” that might save her father. Jamaica Kincaid, who lost her brother to AIDS, calls the disease “death with a small patch of life attached to it.” Employing a journal format, Gordon Livingston anguishes over the loss of his six-year-old son (“My own good health rebukes me,” he cries), and Jane Brox describes the moment of her father’s death (“His fire drowned in its own ash”). A grieving Cheryl Strayed turns temporarily to heroin, just as her mother had craved morphine near the end. Andre Dubus reminds us that “it is limiting to believe sacraments occur only in churches,” and Scott Russell Sanders finds solace in his father’s carpentry tools. James Alan McPherson’s near-death prompts him to begin a reconciliation with his estranged brother; Margot Livesey searches for her mother’s grave in Scotland; and the late Anatole Broyard recognizes that “in emergencies, we invent narratives.”
Powerful, wrenching, illuminating, and lovely.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2001
ISBN: 0-8070-6236-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
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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