Terrific on-the-ground reportage during the initial fraught months of the ongoing war.
A Ukrainian-born foreign affairs correspondent maps the war in progress.
As someone who grew up in Kyiv and speaks both Ukrainian and Russian, Wall Street Journal reporter Trofimov, author of The Siege of Mecca, offers a fly-on-the-wall glimpse into the continuing conflict, via both official reports and firsthand accounts from the streets. In Feb. 23, 2022, when “Kyiv was still a city at peace,” the author’s meeting with former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko tipped him off to what was about to happen, as officials began to flee. “Russian triumph within days was a foregone conclusion, Western intelligence services predicted,” Trofimov reports; no one seriously believed Ukraine could hold off Russian forces. “For centuries, Russian military power had terrified Europe,” writes the author. “As for this place called Ukraine, was it, deep down, a real country after all?” Along with Spanish photojournalist Manu Brabo (the book contains a photo insert), the author moved toward the action, first from Kyiv in the first hours of the Russian onslaught, as the Ukraine Territorial Defense, National Guard, and Air Force helped withstand the capture of the crucial Hostomel Airport; to Kharkiv and Mariupol, strategic cities in the north and south, respectively; Voznesensk and Mykolaiv; and eventually to the Donbas, where Putin withdrew his forces reluctantly to dig in and retrench by April. Along the tumultuous journey of many uncertain months, the author interviewed scores of fighters, civilians, and officials, and he capably reveals how Ukraine managed to channel its steely motivation and national unity into real action on the battlefield. Trofimov also ably conveys that despite some wobbly local officials whose loyalties have been tested, there’s been no question where Ukraine has stood since 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea and essentially “forfeited the sympathy of most Ukrainians, likely for generations.”
Terrific on-the-ground reportage during the initial fraught months of the ongoing war.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593655184
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Delightfully offbeat and unexpectedly moving.
An actor and comedian tells the story of her journey from being an unpaired “animal” to a “new mammal mother” in love.
After Slate completed her first book, “the issue of finding a partner…never rested and never allowed rest for [her] either.” Senses heightened, she had stepped into her most animal self and was on a quest to “fulfill [her] mammal instincts.” Loneliness and emotional vulnerability made her seek connection with neighborhood dogs and insights from books that promised to bring soulmates. When love did finally find her, the anxiety that he would reject her for being herself and “drinking tequila on a Saturday afternoon…then [having] a bath with my friend” was intense. After the pair became a couple and Slate became pregnant with the baby she called “the lifeform,” her neuroses—which the author mocks through an imaginary session with a psychologist—went into overdrive. Yet even as she wrestled with her fears, Slate also discovered that the body that was so often a “bay of doubt” was also becoming a “harbor of well-being” for the life-form to which she was attached. Then, during a time of “plague and disruption,” the author “exploded [her] vagina” to give birth, becoming not only a mother, but a “mammal with a soul that [was] born anew every day.” Though still haunted by a “purple-dark hole marking me in the afternoons,” Slate had become secure enough in the “nest” she had built for herself to see the hole more as a “bluish egg-thing” portending possibility. At times whimsical in its flights of fancy and always surprising in the moments of lyrical grace it offers, Slate’s book celebrates the transformative power of surrendering to love and life.
Delightfully offbeat and unexpectedly moving.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9780316263931
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
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