Carlisle (Island in Time, 1980, etc.), granddaughter of dramatist Leonid Andreyev and the child of Russian ÇmigrÇs, played a part during the Sixties in having Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle and then The Gulag Archipelago see light in the West. For this, she was soon reviled by both Solzhenitsyn (the feud is addressed in her 1978 defense, Solzhenitsyn and the Secret Circle) and the Soviet government, which refused to allow her back into the country for 20 years. With glasnost, however, Carlisle's circumstances changed, and in two separate trips, in 1989 and 1990, she was able to return to Russia to see family and literary associates. Though heavily larded with extracts from her previous books, this account of those journeys gives a picture of what she found: a nation and culture frightened, giddy with the buried art of the past, balefully anti-Semitic, and utterly tapped-out. Carlisle spends too little time, though, with reportage—favoring instead rehashes of literary history and anecdotes about Pasternak, Akhmatava, and Sinyavsky, as well the taking of as ever-ready opportunities to slam at her enemy Solzhenitsyn as the malign force behind current Slavophile/fascistic tendencies. Ill-organized, self-absorbed, self-congratulatory—and a lot less newsy than might justifiably have been expected from someone as intimately connected and knowledgeable.
Pub Date: March 30, 1993
ISBN: 0-89919-957-7
Page Count: 249
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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