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12,000 MILES IN THE NICK OF TIME

Name: 12,000 MILES IN THE NICK OF TIME
Author: Mark Jacobson
ISBN: 0-87113-852-2

A SEMI-DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY CIRCUMNAVIGATES THE GLOBE

by Mark Jacobson ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2003

Best left on the shelf.

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A Brooklyn-based journalist and novelist (Everyone and No One, 1997, etc.) takes his family on an exceptionally tedious global adventure.

Jacobson’s account of their three-month trek from Thailand to England, with extra chapters by eldest daughter Rae, resembles nothing so much as an interminable evening of slide-watching at a neighbor’s house. Readers are “treated” to inside jokes, bizarre capitalization (“So now we were back at the Burning Ghat, with The Future in tow, the Three of Them”), and self-satisfied comments (“The earth, which was round, was lucky to have us”). The family travels to India, where the three children are upset by the Varnasi cremation pyres, and to Cambodia, where they are distressed by the Toul Sleng genocide museum. Jordan is a relief: it’s clean, new, and has the advantage of being the first place on the trip where Jacobson and his wife haven’t been before. While Jacobson reflects at length about his past, and writes pages about each of the children, his wife is hardly mentioned. Her entire identity consists of having had cancer some time before the trip and having made a similar trek with her husband 20 years earlier. From Jordan the family moves on to Egypt (briefly considering relocating to Cairo), then to Israel, to France (where 16-year-old Rae finally meets up with her New York friends), and eventually to England. In between destinations, Jacobson muses about his eldest—brilliant, but failing high school; about middle child Rosalie, a self-assured 12-year-old; and about 9-year-old Billy, obsessed with computer games and sneakers. The author offers no insights save those that would be meaningful to his family, and his humor reads as arrogance: “It was one thing for Cambodians to eat tarantulas—they even ate durians, the only fruit that smelled like a busted sump pump. But a white guy eating a tarantula? This raised the stakes.”

Best left on the shelf.

Pub Date: July 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-87113-852-2

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
PALE HORSE RIDER
by Mark Jacobson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAMPSHADE
by Mark Jacobson

- BOOK REVIEW
TEENAGE HIPSTER IN THE MODERN WORLD
by Mark Jacobson

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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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.