A poet's sad and beautiful memoir about growing up in Idaho logging country, in the complicated bosom of a fundamentalist Christian family. We readers often approach poets' memoirs warily: There is only so far that lovely, delicately crafted reminiscenses of childhood can really take us. They deliver pleasure, easily, but rarely go beyond it to the kind of bold, perspective-wrenching joy that is the province of real literature. Barnes's book forces reconsideration of the form. More in the tradition of spiritual autobiography than literary memoir—with its trials in the wilderness, falls from grace, and conversions and reconversions to faith—Barnes's tale is in part that of an actual American wilderness, the logging camp where she began her life. Her parents' Christian rebirth came later and the scene reordered itself to include revival meetings, dowdy clothes, speaking in tongues, and mandated demure feminine behavior. At a revival meeting a preacher declared Barnes to be a healer, a girl with a gift. At 14, increasingly restive, she was labeled a juvenile delinquent and was sent as punishment to live with the loving, tranquil family of a former minister who, notwithstanding the girl's restored piety, soon chose to shun her as a satanic influence. Adolescence went on and on, with Barnes's very real religiosity becoming increasingly, unsurprisingly complex. In some ways Barnes was a regular American girl; in other ways, like Yeats's dancer indistinguishable from the dance, she herself is the complicated and continuing story of the American struggle with raw wilderness and with the dark night of the soul (her mother finds her as a teenager slumped against the side of her bed, having fallen asleep praying, and wakes her up to go to school). It could scarcely be more significant that the author still lives in Idaho, above the Clearwater River. This is also a book about humility, and how one is of one's origins, no matter how far a person has traveled in imagination, artistry, and insight.
Pub Date: May 3, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-47820-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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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