With a comic crumpet, Queenan leaves his love in Albion. It’s a bit of alright, Percival.
Prolific social critic Queenan (True Believers, 2003, etc.) considers Queen (but not much) and country (more, from Glasgow to Penzance) and delivers the age-old I-kid-because-I-love-you hustle.
Because the subject can’t be encompassed in one volume, it’s far from a comprehensive Baedeker. At times, Queenan offers a Perelman-on-the-road style, sometimes it’s Mencken-at-home, on occasion it’s snarky and usually persnickety in its take on Old Blighty. From the heydays of Boadicea and Richard the Lion Heart to Churchill and Thatcher the Iron Heart, things, in Queenan’s view, haven’t changed much. His British spouse always knew, we can be sure, that Noddy’s car goes “parp!” and is never dismayed by clotted cream. Britons at home are still endearingly crazy, even fruitcake nuts. From York to Liverpool, from Hadrian’s Wall to Tintern Abbey, he finds wonderful eccentricities and appalling pop-culture artifacts. In the latter category, the author places most of West End theater (case in point: The Mouse Trap) and the oeuvre of Sir Paul McCartney. Indeed, there’s much blather about musical taste with undue regard to Liverpuddlian tribute bands. While Sting is okay, Christopher Hogwood needs some correction, and Lloyd Webber’s crimes, we’re reminded, are horrendous. As a child, the author was captivated by Beau Geste and the myth of the inflexible upper lip. High in the Highlands, cozy in the Cotswolds, and besotted with history—of which there is simply too much—Queenan rants about legend in Glastonbury, choochiness in London, and all things twee. In its juicier moments, this apple doesn’t fall far from the twee, though the usually dyspeptic author notes that he’s personally “more sarcastic than arch.” Waxing wroth, Queenan gets our British cousins to show us their knickers. They get up his nose, so he hits our funny bones in this antic panto.
With a comic crumpet, Queenan leaves his love in Albion. It’s a bit of alright, Percival.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2004
ISBN: 0-8050-6980-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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