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
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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