A keen eye combines with an easy writing style in these chronicles of fish-out-of-water exploits and cultural...
A woman recounts her youthful years traveling and living in Europe.
Inspired by a shoebox of old letters she’d written to her mother, Eyerman (Women in the Office: Transitions in a Global Economy, 2000) recalls her footloose years during the 1970s and early ’80s in Europe and North Africa as a young woman escaping a childhood in Columbus, Ohio. She mainly went to places where she had some sort of personal connection, however tenuous, so that acquaintances could help her stay on the cheap. After a visit to Yugoslavia, she headed to Italy for three months and then moved on to France, where she found lodgings with the help of a friend’s sister and tried to get on the good side of a haughty French matriarch named Madame Gravois. From there, it was off to Spain, where a woman from Brooklyn unexpectedly appeared on her doorstep and moved in, then to Morocco, where Eyerman found a bare apartment on the Rue d’Amour above two women who turned out to be prostitutes. Soon, she departed that noisy, hot and hellish country: Young boys sifted through garbage for profit and tortured cats for fun, and she endured bad plumbing that “did not make for regular bowel movements,” especially after she contracted worms. Then it was on to Greece, including Olympia, “home of the gods and athlete’s foot,” and misunderstandings and mix-ups with the locals, till finally she returned to Spain and bought a run-down, rat-infested house for a low price. Though little of import occurs in this tale, Eyerman’s eye for detail and remorseless sense of humor help her weave a funny story about the joys and complications of travel abroad. The landscape, the characters who inhabit it, and the American expats and tourists who infest it all come alive under Eyerman’s acerbic, cynical but nevertheless forgiving eye. Like an entomologist preserving beetles in a bottle, she catalogs national quirks and peculiarities as she passes through each country and on to the next. For many readers, this pleasurable read will beat the expense and hassle of actually traveling.
A keen eye combines with an easy writing style in these chronicles of fish-out-of-water exploits and cultural misunderstandings, all seasoned with plenty of salty wit.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-0993867903
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Dex Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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