A youthful, meandering journey of self-discovery through travel and love.
From an early age, Eaves (Bare: On Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power, 2002) considered travel to be liberation from home in Vancouver and romance with adventurous boys. As a young girl, she had lived with her family for a year in Valencia, Spain, where her father took an academic sabbatical and she attended school; the experience proved a charming entrée into a larger world. Inspired by a crush she developed as a teenager and who wrote her as he traveled the world, she pursued a job as a nanny in Valencia during a summer between attending the University of Washington, Seattle, and enjoyed late nights at bars and moonlit motorcycle rides as a break from her constricted days caring for two Spanish children. Study abroad took her to study Arabic at the American University in Cairo, where she was often followed and harassed by hostile men. A college internship in Karachi sponsored by the U.S. State Department led to more travel in the Middle East, rather than a career as a diplomat. Fleeing a boyfriend and house she had settled in after college in Seattle, she roamed Malaysia and then Australia. Back in the States, a segue into Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs got her a job as a journalist in London, and a trip to South America on the way. Finally, there was Dominic, whose diplomatic career took him, and her, to Paris, where she was stifled by the city’s “insufferable correctness.” In short, the author was plagued by her wanderlust, finding in most relationships a chronic unhappiness. Settling down with one man, she notes, would mean “banning myself from ever seeing another country”—something she recognizes with clear-eyed conviction she could never do.
Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58005-311-2
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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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