A raw outpouring of grief and guilt from a mother who lost her son. Twenty-seven-year-old Neddy Davis died of an undiagnosed heart infection in June 1990. This book is taken from the journal his mother kept during the first year after her loss. Divorced, with her daughter living a continent away in California and her longtime lover moving out, Davis wrote daily entries to sort out her feelings. Angry at God, angry at her son, angry at the doctors, she was also filled with guilt and shame at Neddy's charge that her smoking and drinking during pregnancy (she is a recovering alcoholic) had been to blame for his heart condition. ``Slowing down and feeling the pain was the most important lesson I learned about grieving,'' she writes. Meditation meetings, an association for bereaved parents called Compassionate Friends, and a support group for alcoholics, in addition to siblings and friends, helped her cope as she spent much of the year retracing Neddy's life. Davis looked at family photographs and drawings, revisited her son's school, interviewed his doctors, even returned to her childhood home. Before Neddy's cremated remains were buried (as he had requested), she moved with them from room to room in her apartment, the home where he grew up, talking to the ashes in the canister, recalling their time together. A successful children's book author and illustrator (Honest Abe, not reviewed), Davis eventually resumed her public activities. Her daughter came East for Christmas, Davis marked Neddy's birthday at dinner with his girlfriend, and she completed a huge, vibrantly colored painting of two rowboats, ``side by side but not touching [like] Neddy and me.'' If, as Davis says, ``letting in the grief helps to dispel it faster,'' then other grieving parents will find in this wrenching account a mirror of their mourning, if not exactly a comfort. (photos and illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: May 30, 1995
ISBN: 1-55611-450-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
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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