A very, well, anemic account of the life of the man who wrote the ultimate vampire tale, from the biographer of Edwardian novelist Violet Hunt (1990). The thinness of this biography isn't totally Belford's fault: Bram Stoker cast himself in a supporting role to the innovative actor Henry Irving. Stoker, a tall, genial, redheaded Irishman (he married the woman who was Oscar Wilde's first love), served with great flair and efficiency as the actor's manager at the Lyceum Theatre. He venerated Irving, and the sorrow of his life was the egocentric actor's failure to acknowledge Stoker's role in his success. But the dearth of primary documentation about Stoker—even his journals seem to record Irving's doings more than his own— force Belford to strain to work her subject into a narrative that centers heavily on Irving, his leading lady, Ellen Terry, and the theatrical life of the era. Belford ends up reading the author's life as a gloss on his one lasting work of fiction, dully tracing every element of the tale to some fact of Stoker's life: The great white mane of Stoker's other idol, Walt Whitman, becomes the white hair of Dracula; the safe where Stoker stored the Lyceum's financial records becomes the safe where Mina's typescript is locked away; Dracula himself is Irving, who sucked the life out of his ``servant'' with no recompense. Yet aside from Stoker's penchant for the occult and doppelgÑngers (the latter shared with his friend Mark Twain), the true sources of the novel in his creativity and emotions remain obscure. As for Dracula itself, it remains a conundrum of violation, rapacious desire, and death under the cloak of Victorian civility. It mirrors the fundamental conundrum of Stoker's life, as posed by a journalist of his time: How could this ``great shambling, good-natured overgrown boy'' have been the author of Dracula? Belford doesn't manage an answer. (87 photos and illustrations)
Pub Date: April 10, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41832-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
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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