Not long on instruction, though Macdonald gets the other half of the travel-literature equation: vast entertainment.
An Australian radio correspondent’s cheekily observant chronicle of a few full-throttle years living and traveling in India.
Macdonald’s first brush with the subcontinent was not altogether promising; on the plane home, she gave “smog-swirled New Delhi the finger.” But a palm reader at the airport prophesized that she would return, and that she does, 11 years later, to be with her New Delhi–based news-correspondent boyfriend. India is still Wonderland: “In this other universe everyone seems mad and everything is upside down, back to front and infuriatingly bizarre.” Sacred cows huddle at busy intersections, “where they seem to chat away like the bulls of Gary Larson cartoons,” and “everyone seems to drive with one finger on the horn and another shoved high up a nostril.” It's sensory-overload time, yet the exuberance and energy tugs at Macdonald, beveling her tartness and getting her involved with the people. The mother of a friend welcomes her with “a hug and a gift of toe rings. . . . I love her immediately.” Jains, Parsis, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs all conduct her through their life ways. (“The communal kitchen is the Sikh faith's ‘up yours’ to the Hindu notion of caste.”) The author offers a smattering of theological discourse, but she’s more given to anecdotes about the oddments that mark her time, from the mystery of why her breasts grow to a wished-for larger size after a holy embrace to encounters with India’s real gods: movie stars. At times Macdonald lives like someone out of a Jane Austen novel, at others it seems that Grace Slick has sublet her brainspace, but India convinces her that “I kind of like being confused, wrestling with contradictions, and not having to wrap up issues in a minute.”
Not long on instruction, though Macdonald gets the other half of the travel-literature equation: vast entertainment.Pub Date: April 13, 2004
ISBN: 0-7679-1574-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004
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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