As Lively shapes the greater social picture, she keeps it invested with a personal stake, making her world a deeply lived...
A memoir from novelist Lively (Spiderweb, 1999, etc.) in which the personal opens onto the greater social vista with the help of grace and a gimlet eye, as nearly an entire century reverberates inside an English country house.
Lively’s family purchased the Somerset home in 1923, and she uses its rooms and furnishings like one of “the mnemonic devices of the classical and medieval art of memory,” bearing “witness to the public traumas of a century.” The elements of the house can be emotive trappings as simple as a picnic rug recalling a moorland lunch or weightier signifiers of social change and historical clamor. Lively allows the past to be touched but never obscured by a sepia haze in prose that is remarkably comfortable, setting the stage as cozily as a panful of embers warming a winter bed, and rendering contrasting episodes like the Blitz all the more melancholy or horrible. She ranges freely, from the opening of the country’s west by the Great Western Railway to the importance the Romantic poets and, gradually, an entire nation placed on walking, to church-touring with her grandmother (“and thus learned about iconoclasm and had a sudden startling insight into the power of prejudice and conviction and coercion”), turning from the garden as a veritable botanical marvel—ancient and compelling—to pastoral idealism, fox-hunting, and relations (or the lack thereof) between the sexes and between children and adults in Edwardian England. The best moments come when strangers arrive at the house and leave their mark as children evacuated from the Blitz, evoking the social reforms the evacuation sparked, or as political refugees from Russia, with all the baggage of simply being Russian during the first half of the 20th century.
As Lively shapes the greater social picture, she keeps it invested with a personal stake, making her world a deeply lived experience.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8021-1712-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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