A gathering of savories, many revelatory, each a delight and a small work of art.
Smooth and snazzy collection of travel and set pieces from New Yorker staffer Orlean (The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, 2001, etc.).
Orlean’s not just a sharp writer, but a generous one, giving the most unlikely places a chance to show her their stuff. Like Midland, Texas, the bleached and searing town where George H.W. Bush made his fortune and George W. Bush never made a dime. Or Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Manhattan, where she hobnobs with the class president and pokes her head into the detention hall: “The pent-up annoyance and disaffection and peevishness, the teenage fury of the fifty or so kids inside the room, almost blew me out the door.” She climbs Mount Fuji in a wild storm and marvels that “Thailand, the most pliant of places, has always accommodated even the rudest of visitors.” Orlean’s sly humor perfumes her writing with a wonderful quiet crackle, like pine needles on fire. “The Bannicks are among the last people in the state of Michigan, and possibly in the entire known universe, who still have their telephone service on a party line.” She creates an atmosphere of surprise and amazement when attending a fertility blessing in Bhutan (depicted in a peerless, vest-pocket travelogue) or visiting an African music shop in Paris. She is a master at grabbing attention with a story’s first few lines: “When I went to Scotland for a friend’s wedding last summer, I didn’t plan on firing a gun. Getting into a fistfight, maybe; hurling insults about badly dressed bridesmaids, of course.” Orlean closes with some short items that highlight the devil in her: a tour of the Maidenform Bra Museum, an explanation of why she is glad Tina Turner didn’t stay in her apartment when she was away—nothing against Tina; all visitors are homewreckers.
A gathering of savories, many revelatory, each a delight and a small work of art.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2004
ISBN: 0-679-46293-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
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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