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I JUST LATELY STARTED BUYING WINGS

Name: I JUST LATELY STARTED BUYING WINGS
Author: Kim Dana Kupperman
ISBN: 978-1-55597-560-9

MISSIVES FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE

by Kim Dana Kupperman ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2010

Moving selections, somewhat disconnected but gracefully composed.

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Gettysburg Review managing editor Kupperman offers discrete, attentive autobiographical essays concerning her relationship with her mother and others in her life.

Undoing the harm of years of enforced silence—“the genesis of omission”—is the author’s aim in these essays about family, travel and love, published separately in literary journals, and as a collection the winner of the 2009 Bread Loaf Bakeless Prize for Nonfiction. The first part deals with the author’s mother, “Dolores, a prophecy of sorrows,” who died by suicide in 1989. Kupperman admits her mother had always been “foreign” to her—a glamorous presence who had once worked at Revlon and became the wife of a several-times married fundraiser for Jewish philanthropies (Kupperman’s father) in the 1950s. The couple underwent a rancorous custody battle when the author was eight, although it wasn’t until Kupperman’s father was dying in 2004 that he allowed her access to the extensive court files. “Habeas Corpus” delineates the unsavory contents of those files, such as the mother’s neglect of the daughter and entrapment by detectives in an adultery sting, ultimately necessitating both parties’ need to win the girl’s allegiance. In “Teeth in the Wind,” the author layers reflections of her family over different time periods: The “ghosts” riding a coastal wind storm in Maine circa 1995 bring to mind her attempts to locate the story of her paternal grandmother, supposedly from Kiev, who actually hailed from the Pale of Settlement region in western Ukraine before venturing to America after the pogroms of 1905. The Chernobyl nuclear cataclysm kept Kupperman from traveling to Russia, further complicating “the business of remembering.” In “The Perfect Meal,” the author examines her doomed love affair with a married man, and “That Roar on the Other Side of Violence” provides eloquent anecdotes about the battered women who populated a domestic-abuse shelter where the author worked.

Moving selections, somewhat disconnected but gracefully composed.

Pub Date: July 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-55597-560-9

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Graywolf

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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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.