As true a litmus strip as any of a country whose future hangs in strange and precarious balance. (Photos throughout)
Hanging out with a shepherd, journalist Apple explores the complex relationship between Austria and its Jewish inhabitants, one that doesn’t fit neatly into prescribed categories.
Hans Beuer is a Yiddish folksinger as well as the guardian of 625 sheep, a wandering Jew in the Austrian Alps. But Beuer is not some idyllic, elderly folkloric artifact; he is a man of 45 with a cell phone, a background in radical Jewish politics, a wife who no longer communes with him, and a mission to spread Yiddish culture in a country that voted into power a far-far-right politician with the shadows of Nazism hovering all about him. There are idyllic moments in the gorgeous, comforting Alpine landscape filled with wildflowers, streams, and snow-capped peaks, particularly when Beuer sings to his sheep. His reasons for song, however, are thoroughly modern: he has to calm the fretful animals so he can move them through a world in which high-country sheep cause consternation in the urban populace. And he aspires to take Yiddish culture into (at least) the next decade. Himself the recipient of a fulsome Jewish upbringing, with fond memories of a grandmother who “was reestablishing the order of the shtetl in suburban Houston,” Apple is fascinated by Beuer. Their travels bring the author face to face with any measure of Austrian anti-Semitism, and Apple discovers that the country’s gentiles are deeply ambivalent about reparations to Jewish families. But he also visits ancient Jewish town like Judenburg, and he reminds us that Austria took in Jews when the US would not. His narrative is a tumultuous mix of Nazis and neighbors, art and sex, cars and sheep, a Jewish grandmother in Houston and a girlfriend in Vienna.
As true a litmus strip as any of a country whose future hangs in strange and precarious balance. (Photos throughout)Pub Date: March 29, 2005
ISBN: 0-345-46503-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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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