If Atwood’s name weren’t attached, no publisher would bother putting this trivia between book covers.
Top-of-the-head riffs, the majority occupying a peculiar middle ground between fiction and allegory, from the Canadian novelist (Oryx and Crake, 2003, etc.).
Most are a mere few pages, some are as short as a single paragraph, and all are as slight as their length suggests. Atwood’s sardonic humor flashes from time to time—“We’ve erected a few ruins, but they are not convincing, even from a distance,” mourns the inhabitant of an impoverished and remote fictional coastal community in “Resources of the Ikarians”—but occasional good lines don’t really redeem this odd amalgam of cranky musings (“No more photos. Surely there are enough”), slightly bent myths (Helen of Troy, married to a police chief, runs off to the city and gives interviews about women following their hearts in “It’s Not Easy Being Half-Divine”) and other peculiar workings of well-known material (“Horatio’s Version” of Hamlet, “Chicken Little Goes Too Far,” etc.). “The Animals Reject Their Name” and “Bring Back Mom: An Invocation” seem somewhat less weird, simply because they’re both in verse. Also reasonably readable are “Warlords,” a stinging depiction of society’s inherent violence, and “Winter’s Tales,” a funny portrait of an older narrator perplexing young listeners with faintly absurd recollections of the past (“there were no bare midriffs, and only sailors and convicts had tattoos”). But most of the longer prose pieces—longer meaning four to eight pages—are exercises in self-indulgence, from “Three Novels I Won’t Write Soon” (most readers will murmur “thank goodness” after reading it) to “The Tent,” which presumably is intended as a tribute to the creative process but merely annoys with its cloudy metaphors.
If Atwood’s name weren’t attached, no publisher would bother putting this trivia between book covers.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51668-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
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
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