Highbrow self-help for heterosexual women over 30.
In this absurdly titled little work, a poet and biographer of women (The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood, Starting Out, not reviewed; English/Univ. of Toronto) retells the old story of a woman’s obsessive passion for a self-centered man, then meditates on its themes.
It’s a familiar story: a woman with nothing to lose meets the one; they have an intense and delicious affair; she ends up heartbroken. In this modern version, shorn of Medea’s vengeance and Dido’s melodrama, Sullivan’s brief narrative provides points of entry for a sequence of episodic essays, most juxtaposing romantic fictions with factual love affairs: Dante and Beatrice, Sartre and Beauvoir, Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys. The prose, simple, intimate, and direct, and the quietly confident imagery lend force and clarity to a few salient observations about the trap of romantic obsession. But the overall effect is thin and inconsequential. Sullivan negotiates the turns between bits of memoir, biography, belles-lettres, and feminist pop psychology well enough, but each of these genres, except possibly the last, demands a depth or rigor that just isn’t there. The choice of texts is too arbitrary (not a syllable of Shakespeare), the thinking too shallow, the analysis too sloppy (the section on Charlotte Brontë gets wrong both an important plot element and the sequence in which two works were written) to convey either intellectual or scholarly authority. Despite some autobiographical passages, the writing is not intensely personal enough to carry the punch of an idiosyncratic self. So pop psychology wins after all: Sullivan ends with a coda to the original story that amounts to nothing more than a self-esteem lesson in the mode of Ms., circa 1985. And while it may seem unfair to criticize a study so small for neglecting women’s passion for other women, the consistency of that neglect in writing that purports to be about “women” in general grows tiresome.
Highbrow self-help for heterosexual women over 30.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-58243-177-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
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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