A book about how the unexpected can lead to revelation, which covers the familiar territory of travel as therapy.
A memoir of Greece–and self-discovery–by a woman spurned by love.
For lovers of travel and Greece, Ikaria will strike a familiar chord. Sullivan’s book easily captures the sense of amazement and wonder a person feels when surrounded by a world nearly forgotten. Struggling to keep her life in one piece, the author traveled to Greece for a two-month stretch, leaving her children, family and friends behind in Oregon. Her fascination with Greece started with the language–while taking a course in Greek, she fell in love with her instructor Mikis, a young graduate student several years her junior. Devastated by his rejection, Sullivan escaped to Greece, a place defined by its rich mythology, deep history and vibrant culture, to recover from the embarrassing blow. Sullivan’s trip is fueled by passion and loneliness, selfishness and desperation, and she punctuates her experiences with subtle, poignant sentences that accurately describe these heartfelt and very human emotions. “Travel is good practice for dying,” she writes. “You can’t really believe you are going away. Yet you have chosen a day to do it, and that day comes. You have to travel to remember.” The narrative is, at times, as aimless as a wandering vagrant, hapless as a traveler with no itinerary. Sullivan describes several trips to Greece after her first visit, but does not map out a clear chronology. However, the novel remains lyrical and episodic in its poignant meanderings. Ikaria is a meditation on travel and memory and a token of the author’s love affair with the quaint Greek Island of the northern Aegean.
A book about how the unexpected can lead to revelation, which covers the familiar territory of travel as therapy.Pub Date: April 14, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9777318-6-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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