cultivate. (line drawings throughout)
Highly opinionated rambles through a variety of gardens, most of them his own, from horticulturalist and curmudgeon Lacy
(The American Gardener, 1988, etc.) Gathered here are cuttings from Lacy’s quarterly letter (Homeground), 84 short pieces covering an array of topics and grouped by season. Most of them are reports of gardening adventures and meditations on Lacy’s quarter-acre of southern New Jersey turf—as snug and sensual and safe a little harbor as ever there was. He has a cottage garden and a woodland garden, and both are arenas of engagement—intellectual, philosophical, ecological, moral—where Lacy thrashes toward some understanding of beauty and life’s purpose as experienced through gardening. It is not enough for him to simply like a holly bush; he wants to know its background, which leads him into geology and botanical history and how the plant got here from there. If he likes a plant, he sings its praises with lucidity and restraint (for Lacy is buttoned-down and generally reticent), though on occasion his coverage of some subspecies or other reads like a laundry list. If he dislikes a plant or a gardening notion, he gives it the blade, but always with an authority that rings through as clear as a bell—as in his intelligent response to the all-or-nothing, native-versus- exotic plant debate—even when he is in his most priggish mood: "By now, readers may possibly detect some slight snobbery on my part. I confess it." And how. Yet he is not devoid of humor, as he demonstrates with considerable wit when poking fun at, say, the errant pomposities of plant catalog prose (where Katherine White once found fascinating eccentrics, Lacy finds deceitful nincompoops). Lacy’s garden, like his mind, is a fine mosaic of whimsy and understatement, and a provocation for readers to go forth and
cultivate. (line drawings throughout)Pub Date: April 14, 2000
ISBN: 0-618-00378-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
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
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
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