by Steven Key Meyers ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 19, 2017
A slim, ornate, leisurely memoir of the author’s time at Caramoor.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
Meyers (My Mad Russian, 2015, etc.) tells of his time as a servant at a historic mansion in this memoir.
In 1970, 17-year-old Meyers began working as an underbutler at the Caramoor estate near Katonah, New York. Built by the theremin soloist Lucie Bigelow Rosen and her lawyer/banker husband, Walter Tower Rosen, the mansion was a hodgepodge of European high culture populated by a colorful assortment of butlers, maids, gardeners, valets, and their families. The Rosens were deceased by this point; Caramoor was the seat of their Foundation for the Arts and the home of its executive director, Michael Sweeley. Meyers spent his days dusting artifacts and bringing Sweeley his tea, setting it “on the bureau beside his big oaken 16th-century bed, opposite the mantelpiece bearing bronze John Harvard bookends and an inscribed photograph of Gina Bachauer.” In his free time, Meyers had access to the estate’s 100 acres of wooded paths, its extensive library, and some of its art, which he was allowed to hang in the cottage he inhabited on the grounds. The annual Caramoor Summer Music Festival brought musicians, whom Meyers had to discipline when they tried to misuse antique furniture. Meyers was able to meet celebrated artists and performers like Julius Rudel, Maureen Forrester, Andrea Velis, and New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. When the house opened as a museum, Meyers gave tours to visitors, pointing out unique features and collections. Meyers’ prose, ornate and slightly mannered, befits the memoir’s formal and anachronistic setting: “The Rosens’ taste was very good, but didn’t seem to extend past about 1800. I expect that both consciously rebelled against the Victoriana they were raised amidst, but from there their tastes went backwards, not forwards.” This is a slim volume, which works in its favor. Neither a strong narrative nor strong emotions ever arise over the course of the author’s reminiscences. Instead, the account mirrors a leisurely walk through Caramoor’s house and property, with Meyers pausing to acknowledge a particular room or object, a ritual associated with a certain hour of the day, or a person and some brief anecdote associated with him or her. What the book lacks in narrative momentum, it makes up for in the way it successfully summons not just a place, but the energy of that place. This is a work dedicated to an earlier era, during which time the author was employed at an estate dedicated to an even earlier era. It isn’t nostalgia that characterizes Meyers’ words so much as appreciation for a tiny enclave dedicated to finery away from the larger conflicts and trends of the modern world. To read this book is to escape briefly into a mindset where high tea and fine art are all one needs to forget one’s problems. Meyers’ brief time at Caramoor and the shortness of this work are a testament to the unfortunate fleetingness of such sentiment.
A slim, ornate, leisurely memoir of the author’s time at Caramoor.Pub Date: June 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63492-416-0
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Booklocker
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
More by Steven Key Meyers
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
Share your opinion of this book
More by J.D. Salinger
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1990
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
Share your opinion of this book
More by Michael Crichton
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.