Instructive, well-poised lessons from the trenches.
Nostalgic, reflective essays on the writing life by the South African novelist Freed (House of Women, 2002, etc).
Her favorite writers are V.S. Naipaul, Marguerite Duras, and Nancy Mitford, from whose work she quotes often in establishing the autobiographical cord to a novelist’s craft. In 11 essays, Freed traces her trajectory from a 1960s childhood in Durban, South Africa, to her reinvention as a much-married expatriate novelist living in California. Freed begins with her reading lists as a child (Enid Blyton and the plays of J.M. Barrie) in an affluent household that until the mid-1970s, she notes, knew no television. The author dwells on the contrasting personalities of her parents, both actors. Freed’s flamboyant, assertive Jewish mother was an especially strong presence; “the love affair she conducted with trouble” obsessed her daughter for 30 years. In the essay “Honorary Son,” she explains that because her two older sisters were beautiful and being groomed for marriage, and her four “shadow” brothers had died in miscarriage, plain Freed was allowed to discover her true nature from her parents’ beneficent neglect, and she gained confidence through defiance and self-assertion. “My sense of male entitlement has carried easily into every sphere of my life,” she writes. She explores the autobiographical elements at length in her novels, especially the first, Home Ground, with its explosive opening paragraph detailing a white child’s “pulling on the penis of the garden boy.” (28) The book was subsequently banned in apartheid South Africa and beyond. Two essential elements in the development of the writer: years of practice and ruthlessness. Her own sense of ruthlessness took her away from her homeland, as an exchange student in Far Rockaway, New York, and later as a teacher trying to impart to her writing students how to sustain a “focus” she took many years to find in her own life.
Instructive, well-poised lessons from the trenches.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-15-101132-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2005
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
