Sweet memories of the distant past are juxtaposed with present agonies as Bayley, a retired Oxford don, novelist, and critic, concludes the story of wife, Iris Murdoch’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease in this piercing follow-up to Elegy for Iris (1998). Unlike Elegy, which covered more of Bayley’s life with Murdoch, this memoir focuses on the terminal stage of Alzheimer’s—and the means of mental escape that caretakers devise for themselves lest they be consumed by isolation and regret. In harrowing detail, it traces the regression of Murdoch, one of the most brilliant novelists of the postwar period, to a childlike state—banging on windows, making cooing sounds while being fed by her husband, escaping from home, and confinement to a nursing home—before her death this past February. “As her condition worsens,” Bayley notes, “and our imprisonment becomes more complete, the compensations mount up—they have to.” Memory is one of the “friends” he gratefully seizes, with his mind roaming back to the days before his marriage: to childhood vacations at Littlestone-on-Sea, an English seaside resort; service as a lieutenant in WWII; a postwar flirtation with a young German woman and a romance with a former postulant; and his courtship of Murdoch. Bayley seems as forthright in detailing his own frustration as in chronicling Murdoch’s final days, describing his inner rage, suppressed violent impulses, psychic separation from the woman he has known for nearly a half-century, the impending loneliness he knows will follow her death, and his breakdown after more than five years of watching the disease. The scenes of Bayley’s youth and early manhood are not as vivid as Elegy’s recreation of the earlier kind, loving Murdoch, or of the friends and university life she shared with Bayley. This memoir successfully conveys, however, how mutual affection and respect solidify into a tenderness and commitment that cannot be sundered by adversity. A moving final tribute to the healing force of memory and the sustaining power of love.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-393-04856-X
Page Count: 275
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
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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