A fine introduction to a well-chosen canon.
The rich pleasures and profound lessons of literature come alive in this stimulating collection of essays on great novels.
Inviting us to throw down our airport best-sellers and savor the subtle writing, complex characters and psychological insights of time-tested masterpieces, Faulkner, founder of an informal bibliophilic website, gets us started with these engaging critical appreciations of three dozen classics. Faulkner’s selection includes everything from monuments such as Anna Karenina to forgotten gems such as Sigrid Undset’s medieval domestic novel trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter, all chosen with a shrewd eye for popular appeal and readability. There’s little modernist alienation here, no Hemingway, Kafka, Roth or Pynchon; but there is lots of Victorian melodrama, both Brontës included, along with 20th-century works that share a realist aesthetic and humanist ideals, from E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View to the Harry Potter series. Each chapter examines three works in the light of an intriguing reader-involvement theme; Chapter Nine, “Chick-Lit for Grownups,” gleans challenging relationship advice from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Anne Tyler’s Celestial Navigations. (But take heart, lads: “Action Figures” plumbs the tests of manhood in Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front.) The snappy but thoughtful essays contain plot synopses, author bios and critical assessments, along with fun factoids—Victor Hugo, we learn, became the deity of the Vietnamese Buddhist Cao Dai sect—and provocative book-group discussion questions. (Tom Sawyer prompts the brow-furrower, “Have we lost something in the attempt to eradicate bad behavior in boys?”) Faulkner’s readings of the classics are sympathetic but sharp-eyed and alive to both philosophical content and literary quality; she teases out the gray-shaded moral ambiguities of Vanity Fair while celebrating its vibrant social whirl, laughs at the sentimentality of Dickens’ dying-child scenes while registering their emotional power. Like any good critic, she makes readers want to hit the books.
A fine introduction to a well-chosen canon.Pub Date: June 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-1453508114
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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