Great-Grandmother is or rather was Madeleine L'Engle's mother and this is the summer of her 90th birthday and her "swift descent" before she died although she had already lost so much — her memory, her physical and emotional faculties, herself — everything except her ousia defined here as the essence of being. Mrs. L'Engle admittedly advances her new old word as enthusiastically and repeatedly as she did "ontology" in her last book — A Circle of Quiet. The experience she shares is of course the death of a parent with its simultaneous, threatening portents for the next to come, the next to go. In part she attempts to reconcile it (and fails); in part she avoids it (along with passing mention of all the indignities of senility from nursing to funeral home) by writing around it to the degree that most of the book is a retrospective of her own childhood, of great-grandmother's, and of still more distant forebears while returning again and again to her own very complete home at Crosswicks with "its fullness of life" — husband, children, grandchildren. If you are attuned to Madeleine L'Engle's ousia with all its expansive subjectivity/sentimentality ("my heart weeps"), you won't get away scot-free. She's dealing, after all, with that unconditional fact of life which faces us all sooner or later.
Pub Date: Nov. 20, 1974
ISBN: 006254506X
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1974
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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