True confessions by a Cambridge alum whose success in literature and love belies a youth of forged checks and stolen first editions. Burdened from the start with a complicated family life, novelist Rayner (The Elephant, 1991, etc.) stopped telling the truth about himself back in boarding school. His fathera con artist who faked his own death and then surfaced years later in jailbecame a victim of cancer in one version, a hospitalized invalid in another. Matriculation at Cambridge, with its secure and ancient cloisters, felt like coming home for Raynerat last an identity to throw around his shoulders. At Emmanuel College, fascinated by new friends, Rayner continued to let his own story fall away and, having not paid his university fees, found himself hundreds of pounds in debt and in danger of losing his degree. His habit of pinching books escalated into systematic check-kiting, with the occasional burglary. Graduated and trying to be a writer in London, the pattern of fast friends and ballooning debt continued. Then, suddenly, ``for no reason life conspired to be nice,'' and Rayner went straight overnight, striking a balance in work and love, even finding a publisher. But in writing a novel based on his own relationship with his now-ailing father, he found himself systematically and coldly stealing the details of his father's life. His father's death precipitated a reckoning with all the buried deceit of the past, a confessional narrative that reads a lot like a novel, with a seductively rakish and endearingly naive hero. But this is not a cautionary tale: Our hero sees his private demons. Rayner teeters on the edge of disaster for so long, the tension begins to ebb, and then there is no comeuppance at alljust an increasingly self-indulgent spectacle. Fictional characters can be indulged, but real penance should be private.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-395-75288-4
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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