Could have been funnier, should have been kinder.
The memoirs of an acidic curmudgeon and widower.
After his beloved wife Iris Murdoch died, Bayley (Iris and Her Friends, 1999, etc.) was besieged by well-wishers offering assistance and companionship. Margot and Mella, the two most irrepressible of the gaggle of helpmeets, zipped into his life with a feminine force that rendered the man helpless to avoid their tireless ministrations. One slipping innocently into his bed, the other staging a full-frontal seduction, Margot and Mella riotously overturned the author’s nascent widower’s lifestyle of reclusive seclusion with their zealous determination to help one who does not want to be helped. The ingredients for a delightful farce or comedy of manners lie in bountiful supply within this material, but Bayley fails to take advantage of these possibilities with his snide commentary. Perhaps too honest in his reactions, he assails the reader with his ambivalent distaste for this humorously affable pair. It’s an authorial blunder that casts him as the unlikely villain of his own life story even when he does admit his own culpability in the soap opera around him. Couple this cranky tone with a literature professor’s overenthusiastic affection for literary allusion, and the result distills itself from a heartwarming and breezy consideration of life as a widower into a bitter diatribe against two generous (though perhaps needy) souls. Mercifully, Bayley’s humanity outshines his cantankerousness on occasion, as when he ponders over his life without Iris and finds new affections with his old friend Audi. His love for Iris is plangent and deep, filled with memory and their shared history; his love for Audi is fresh and budding, filled with possibilities and regeneration. Still, since you never know when this crocodile will snap, you’d better stand clear altogether.
Could have been funnier, should have been kinder.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-02561-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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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