Next book

TRAVELS WITH MY TROMBONE

A CARIBBEAN JOURNEY

Thin, uninflected report on several months that English author/musician Shukman (Sons of the Moon, 1990) spent caroming about the Lesser Antilles and the South American highlands of Ecuador and Colombia. Presumably aiming for the picaresque, Shukman allows his narrative to sprawl, piling up irrelevant detail as he offers a largely unrevealing look at the peoples, places, and popular arts of the Caribbean Basin. Eight years earlier, Shukman had spent time in the South American Andes, an experience recorded in his first book. Here, he returns to the tropics, carrying his trombone and hoping to sit in with various bands throughout the area. His first destination is Trinidad—with its highly publicized calypso groups—where, during the pre-Lenten Carnival, he joins an aggregation called the Blue Ventures. The major insight he seems to gain from that experience, though, is that nonstop revelry is exhausting. Shukman next moves north, through the Grenadines to Guadeloupe, where zouk is the current music-of-choice. Then it's on to mountainous Dominica, where the author explores the only Carib Indian reservation in the world. Along his route, he encounters a gallery of island musicians, barely distinguishable from one another—as are the islands themselves—through the author's unfocused prose. There's a sameness, unfortunately, to most of Shukman's experiences: all- night jam sessions, boozy conversations in fly-specked rum shops, sweaty siestas in hot hotel rooms. The author is most successful when he describes a Shango voodoo ceremony he attended in Trinidad, and when he recounts his terror as he's caught in a police round-up in Cartagena, Colombia. These are slim pickings, however, in a dull and disappointing work.

Pub Date: May 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-517-59360-2

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993

Categories:
Next book

NUTCRACKER

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

Categories:
Next book

TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

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

Categories:
Close Quickview