Entertaining beach reading for fans of humorous, breezy essays.
From comedic essayist and novelist Notaro (It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy, 2011, etc.), another compendium of humorous, heated, autobiographical tales about the minutiae of modern American life.
Having consistently hit the best-seller charts with her previous collections of true, often hilarious and bawdy stories, the author sticks with the same formula here. These essays include “I Hate Foodies,” “Creepy Facebook Moments” and “Six Things I Never Want to Hear (Again) While Standing in Line at the Pharmacy.” Notaro is nothing if not direct as she riffs on topics such as why it’s never acceptable for nettles to appear on restaurant menus and hunting down the relative whom she suspects of borrowing her shower puff. Without a plot, these pieces follow no order, but they share her signature, casually blistering tone. In one, entirely made up of food-related expressions that she loathes (including “gastrique,” “coulis,” “mouthfeel” and “savory”), she offers this explanation for her hatred of the word “delish”: “If it’s not something you would name your dog or if you’re embarrassed to yell it out in front of strangers, we need to banish it from the human language.” The book's title was conceived when Notaro appeared on a comedy-writing panel where a fellow presenter condescendingly referred to her as “the potty mouth at the table.” She claims to have been humiliated, but that didn't stop her from getting revenge, and it clearly hasn’t stalled her from continuing to produce biting, sometimes crude pieces that read more like off-the-cuff rants than revised works of writing. In spite of the essays that miss their mark, when Notaro’s funny, she’s very, very funny.
Entertaining beach reading for fans of humorous, breezy essays.Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-5939-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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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