Confirmation of the promise shown in the author’s bestselling debut.
A worthy successor to Crosley’s well-received debut, I Was Told There’d Be Cake (2008).
Where her first collection focused on a young professional’s life in Manhattan, this follow-up finds the author—whose day job as a book publicist is rarely mentioned—taking her show on the road. She gets lost in Lisbon (actually, she gets lost pretty much everywhere), threatened by a bear in Alaska and all but deported from France—or at least discouraged from ever again visiting Notre Dame. Most of the book is funny, some of it even laugh-out-loud, but her literary gifts go well beyond easy laughs. The humor flows naturally and subtly from characters and situations, as if these were real-life short stories. “An Abbreviated Catalog of Tongues,” which initially seems to be a perfunctory pet essay, yet turns revelatory in a number of directions, addressing everything from sibling relationships to her parents’ religion. “[M]y parents are not big believers in God,” she writes. “Or, rather, they believe in him partially. Which is tricky. It’s like being kind of pregnant or only mostly dead. You’re either in or you’re out.” Perhaps the finest essay is the final one, “Off the Back of a Truck,” a clever, challenging piece from which the book takes its title. Initially about wanting what you can’t afford, it transforms into an exploration of receiving what you want that you can’t afford, through means that you’re only partially willing to admit are pretty shady. Ultimately, though, it becomes a meditation on a romance that forces Crosley to come to terms with a truth she’d suspected and the lie she was living. It’s the least humorous of the collection, but the most unflinchingly true.
Confirmation of the promise shown in the author’s bestselling debut.Pub Date: June 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59448-759-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010
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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