Burgess's best book and, he's said, his last: the second and final part of his autobiography, following Little Wilson and Big God (1986). Burgess's life-review, covering 1959 to 1982, equals his finest fiction, A Clockwork Orange and Earthly Powers. It opens with Burgess and his flopabout alcoholic wife Lynne just returned from Malaya and with Burgess, now 42, being told he has a brain tumor and only a year to live. Black farce underlies his sudden effort to ensure an income for his wife once he's dead: he sets out to write his first novel and, writing 2,000 words a day, produces five books in bis fatal final year—only to survive! But now he's a professional writer. Alas, fiction doesn't pay. He takes up book reviewing on a major scale, sells review copies by the suitcaseful, adds on TV and play reviewing, expands with the odd journalistic job, lecturing, touring, playwriting, scriptwriting for Hollywood and British TV—all the while turning out novel after novel. Dizzied reviewers await his novel of the month. Burgess has not time to be the artist he wants to be, is always in debt, odd-jobbing, and when he does rise above hackwork, as in Napoleon Symphony, it's a failure. But with book after book he does his best, despite terrible reviews. Meanwhile, Lynne collapses in public all over Europe, cuckolds him repeatedly, and never reads his books, although she does help him dress his heroines. When she dies, Burgess's real life begins. A former lover tells him she has a five-year-old son by him. Burgess insists on marriage. Then he meets Stanley Kubrick, who shows him the film he's made of A Clockwork Orange (after tossing out Burgess's script and filming his own). Its brilliance is a mixed blessing, with Burgess forever after condemned to public gaze. His last pages—a finely itemized inventory of his house, study, and general clutter—show wonderfully the small profits of the writer's trade. Tiptop—though the second half is less satiric.
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-8021-1405-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1991
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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