From a writer now 80 years old, whose real subject whatever the topic at hand has been her own experiences of food, place, and appreciative living, comes a gathering of what she acknowledges to be her most "personal and nostalgic" pieces: the prefaces she wrote to her own books and others, complete with even more personal and nostalgic prefaces-to-the-prefaces that were composed for this edition. Read together, these layers of cordial reminiscence make up an impressionistic autobiography that glances off such encountered phenomena (and purported subjects) as Maurice Chevalier, the Gare de Lyon in Paris, or the "delicate pagentry" of Japanese cooking. (ln a twist, the burden of one preface, to The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, is how Fisher never did encounter Toklas.) Bread, wine, cities, towns, age: to Fisher, all are inextricably and candidly entwined with particular occasions, companions, childhood treats, or personal tastes. Tea? It "makes me drunk." Jane and Michael Stern's Square Meals? "I really liked their two [earlier] books better." Angelo Pelligrini's The Unprejudiced Palate? Reminds her of the time they met as wine tasters, when Pelligrini showed up enraged that he was paired with a woman, and Fisher, the first of her sex to be appointed to the panel, fretted about having to follow the custom of spitting between tastes. Friends by the end of the session, "we spat in unison into the suddenly attractive puddle of fruit juice and water we shared, and a newspaper paparazzo from Los Angeles shot our jets meeting in midair just above the bucket." Just so does Fisher memorialize the moment's bond or pleasure, in her elegant spring-water prose that is itself a considerable pleasure.
Pub Date: May 18, 1988
ISBN: 0865474141
Page Count: 218
Publisher: North Point/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1988
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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