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HUMAN RELATIONS & OTHER DIFFICULTIES

Name: HUMAN RELATIONS & OTHER DIFFICULTIES
Author: Mary-Kay Wilmers
ISBN: 978-0-374-17349-4

ESSAYS

by Mary-Kay Wilmers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 27, 2019

Insightful essays for literary-minded readers.

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A collection of essays by the London Review of Books co-founder, who has been its sole editor since 1992.

Throughout, Wilmers (The Eitingons: A Twentieth-Century Story, 2010) provides astute characterizations of exceptional women, especially writers like Jean Rhys and Joan Didion. There are few personal essays from the acclaimed editor, who came of age during the feminist movements of the 1960s and ’70s, but one example is the brief opening piece, “I Was Dilapidated” (1972), about her struggles with motherhood. “I got depressed,” she writes, “because instead of maternal goodness welling up inside me, the situation seemed to open up new areas of badness in my character.” Most of her essays since then—the final piece, about poet Marianne Moore and her relationship with her prickly mother, was published in 2015—demonstrate Wilmers’ occasionally supercilious yet irresistible seduction with the work at hand, plunging readers into long, involved pieces about writers’ lives, motivations, and peccadilloes. As John Lanchester, who first met her as an editorial assistant in 1987, notes in his ginger introduction, Wilmers is a ferocious reviewer, as shown in her more general essays on the art of writing obituaries (“Civis Britannicus Fuit”), Pears, the “venerable English soap” (“Next to Godliness”), or her own writerly craft (“The Language of Novel Reviewing”). Though the daily work of editing the LRB got in the way of the author’s own writing (a fate most editors will understand), it is in her coverage of women that she truly shines—e.g., “Death and the Maiden,” her look at two books on the life of Alice James, sister to William and Henry (“being a James was a complicated business”). Another notable essay is “Hagiography,” Wilmers’ disapproving yet generous take on Rhys’ last years as delineated by the novelist’s friend David Plante. While the author’s subjects are mostly British and of a certain age, others dear to her heart include Patty Hearst and Freud, which should broaden her reading audience.

Insightful essays for literary-minded readers.

Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-374-17349-4

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST DO WHAT YOU WERE TOLD?
by Jenny Diski edited by Mary-Kay Wilmers

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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.