Sparkling description of Canadian cities and villages by world-class travel-writer Morris, author of Hong Kong, Venice, The Matter of Wales (her present home), and many others. Faced with the enormity of writing about this huge country, Morris says that ``Canada is one country whose parts are greater than the whole, and its colossal scale is becoming increasingly irrelevant.'' And so she focuses this collection of essays (first commissioned by the editors of the Canadian magazine Saturday Night) on ten urban areas rather than on Canada's immense train lines, tracts of forest, and so on. These areas are: St. John's, St. Andrews, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Banff, Yellowknife, and Vancouver. Morris finds St. John's (Newfoundland) the most entertaining town in North America: ``windy, fishy, anecdotal, proud, weather-beaten, quirky, obliging, ornery, and fun,'' full of irresistible talkers about themselves and their festivals, dramatically fjord-like harbor, and chunky wooden streets whose ``kind of throwaway picturesqueness [suggests] to me sometimes a primitive San Francisco, sometimes Bergen in Norway, occasionally China, and often an Ireland of long ago.'' St. Andrews's nostalgic shoals, islands, fish weirs, and church-bell conservativeness move Morris to thoughts of abandoning her traditional ``radical, if not actually anarchist views....'' Montreal she finds to be the most exciting and volatile Canadian city, with its two hostile linguistic groups. In Ottawa she detects abstraction and allegory, ``some misty iconification of Canada.'' And ``Toronto seems to me, in time as in emotion, a limbo- city....The people in its streets, walking with that steady, tireless, infantry-like pace that is particular to this city, seem on the whole resigned, without either bitterness or exhilaration, to being just what they are.'' Great reading that Canadians as well as folks south will welcome.
Pub Date: May 20, 1992
ISBN: 0-06-018328-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992
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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