An engrossing recollection, brimming with insight and emotional candor.
Lange, who was born in West Germany, recounts her trip to the former border of a once-divided country.
In the 1960s and ’70s, the author grew up in Northwestern Germany and saw East Germany as a “distant shadow, a blank shape behind the Iron Curtain,” a “mysterious country about which I knew almost nothing until it ceased to exist.” In 1987, she moved to Vermont, a place that eventually became another home, or “second Heimat,” for her, but despite her acquired American sensibilities,she longed to reconnect with her German roots. In 2016, Lange commenced a multiyear expedition across the German borderland (much of it on her father’s “trusty Bremen Bike”) exploring the area referred to as the Green Belt and known for its “remarkable biodiversity.” In this exceedingly thoughtful memoir, the author interviews many Germans who lived under the acrimonious bifurcation of Germany into ideologically opposed states and explores how this experience affected their own senses of Heimat. A philosophically searching reflection on the very meaning of the term emerges from her investigations: “Heimat is inseparably tied to a person’s feelings about that physical place: a sense of belonging, of feeling understood, of connectedness with a particular landscape and familiar people, of not being a stranger, of one’s native habitat.” The notions of habitats and ecosystems are central to her reflections as she notes the ways in which the “brutality of the border” was also a “haven for so many creatures” and the Green Belt was “an oasis of remarkable space and quiet in a fast-moving world.” Lange also writes astutely about the “dark side of Heimat,” the nationalistic fervor to exclude “anyone ‘other.’” This is an impressively erudite remembrance, one that invokes the spirits of Thoreau and Goethe.
An engrossing recollection, brimming with insight and emotional candor.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9783838219516
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Ibidem Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Sometimes funny, sometimes silly, sometimes quite sad—i.e., an accurate portrait of life in one's 50s.
The further adventures of Candace and her man-eating friends.
Bushnell (Killing Monica, 2015, etc.) has been mining the vein of gold she hit with Sex and the City (1996) in both adult and YA novels. The current volume, billed as fiction but calling its heroine Candace rather than Carrie, is a collection of commentaries and recounted hijinks (and lojinks) close in spirit to the original. The author tries Tinder on assignment for a magazine, explores "cubbing" (dating men in their 20s who prefer older women), investigates the "Mona Lisa" treatment (a laser makeover for the vagina), and documents the ravages of Middle Aged Madness (MAM, the female version of the midlife crisis) on her clique of friends, a couple of whom come to blows at a spa retreat. One of the problems of living in Madison World, as she calls her neighborhood in the city, is trying to stay out of the clutches of a group of Russians who are dead-set on selling her skin cream that costs $15,000. Another is that one inevitably becomes a schlepper, carrying one's entire life around in "handbags the size of burlap sacks and worn department store shopping bags and plastic grocery sacks....Your back ached and your feet hurt, but you just kept on schlepping, hoping for the day when something magical would happen and you wouldn't have to schlep no more." She finds some of that magic by living part-time in a country place she calls the Village (clearly the Hamptons), where several of her old group have retreated. There, in addition to cubs, they find SAPs, Senior Age Players, who are potential candidates for MNB, My New Boyfriend. Will Candace get one?
Sometimes funny, sometimes silly, sometimes quite sad—i.e., an accurate portrait of life in one's 50s.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4726-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Breathtakingly magical.
A powerful homage to the natural world, from England by way of Canada.
Combining poetic words (somewhat reminiscent of Mary Oliver’s poetry in their passion for the natural world) with truly stunning illustrations, this unusually beautiful book brings to readers the magic and wonder of nature. This is not a book about ecology or habitat; this is a book that encourages readers to revel in, and connect with, the natural world. Focusing on a particular subject, whether it be animal, insect, or plant, each poem (rendered in a variety of forms) delivers a “spell” that can be playful, poignant, or entreating. They are most effective when read aloud (as readers are encouraged to do in the introduction). Gorgeous illustrations accompany the words, both as stand-alone double-page spreads and as spot and full-page illustrations. Each remarkable image exhibits a perfect mastery of design, lively line, and watercolor technique while the sophisticated palette of warms and cools both soothes and surprises. This intense interweaving of words and pictures creates a sense of immersion and interaction—and a sense that the natural world is part of us. A glossary encourages readers to find each named species in the illustrations throughout the book––and to go one step further and bring the book outside, to find the actual subjects in nature. Very much in the spirit of the duo’s magisterial The Lost Words (2018), this companion is significantly smaller than its sprawling companion; at just 6.5 by 4.5 inches when closed, it will easily fit into a backpack or generously sized pocket. “Wonder is needed now more than ever,” Macfarlane writes in the introduction, and this book delivers it.
Breathtakingly magical. (Poetry. 6-adult)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4870-0779-9
Page Count: 120
Publisher: House of Anansi Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2020
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