Dazzles with its fantastic variety.
Stellar work with a 360-degree gaze, reporting on places both exotic and familiar.
Mayes (Bella Tuscany, 1999, etc.), assuming the annual’s editing tasks for the first time, selects glimpses of places that run the gamut from the middle of nowhere, as in Michael Finkel’s piece on “The Void” (a.k.a. the center of the Sahara desert), to the middle of everything, as in Adam Gopnik’s report from NYC immediately following the September 11 terrorist attack, “The City and the Pillars.” Not surprisingly, 9/11 is acknowledged in a number of essays, most specifically in Thomas Swick’s thoughts on languishing air travel at the end of 2001 and in Scott Anderson’s “Below Canal Street.” The anticipated exotic spots, however, are also solidly represented: Laurence Gonzales sets out to visit the least inhabited area of the US in “Beyond the End of the Road,” Tony Perottet rambles through Menorca in “Spain in a Minor Key,” and Kevin Canty tours the folksy American landscape in the evocative “Postcards from the Fair.” Particularly hypnotic is Isabella Tree’s portrait of languid living on the Aegean island of Spetses. At one point, honeybees set up shop in the bathroom, whereupon the house’s human tenants set out bowls to catch the honey to sweeten their bread and yogurt—a demonstration of sangfroid difficult to imagine occurring in the prosaic continental US. The collection is larded with impressive pieces from ringers: P.J. O’Rourke offers a remarkably upbeat travelogue of a recent driving tour of Israel; Molly O’Neill pays a visit to former Le Cirque chef Sottha Khunn at his childhood home in Cambodia; and David Sedaris turns a cancelled flight into an absurdist meditation.
Dazzles with its fantastic variety.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2002
ISBN: 0-618-11879-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
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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