A fun ride, worth the trip.
A road-trip memoir from an author who has “a love-hate relationship with adventure.”
Why did a woman who suffers from carsickness, has no sense of direction and hates roughing it accompany her husband on a grueling five-week, 7,800-mile rally through China, Mongolia, Russia and Europe? After selling their software company and settling on a ranch in Colorado, Bennett and her husband, Bernard, grew restless. After two decades of marriage, they had “grown nonchalant about our togetherness. We needed a new project, something that would pull us off our separate paths and merge us into a team again.” At a lunch stop for the Colorado Grand classic car tour, Bernard had a chance encounter that offered up a challenge: a 35-day race following the silk route taken by Genghis Khan on the centenary of the original Peking to Paris Motor Challenge. All they needed was determination, money and a classic car. So began a two-year project to find, rebuild and drive the perfect prewar automobile. They settled on a 1940 GM LaSalle two-door coupe, affectionately named Roxanne. But the rebuild took longer than expected, and Bennett and Bernard had no chance to road test the work and learn the nuances of GPS navigation. This led to a structural problem that plagued them throughout the journey. While Bennett longed to see the landscape and experience the local culture, they ended up driving 10 hours per day and spending their off days in various garage bays. “This trip is all about driving and not about the journey,” she lamented. Yet her writing captures the beauty of the austere landscape, changing social dynamics with other teams and the nuances of her shifting relationship with her husband.
A fun ride, worth the trip.Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62087-800-2
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
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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