This lean midpoint memoir, fleshed out of collected short essays, alternates analysis of the author's male family relations with reflections on his experiences as the married father of two young sons. Novelist Lott (Reed's Beach, 1993, etc.)—a writing instructor at the College of Charleston and Vermont College—declares intriguingly that there is no way for him to write about his life without writing of ``RC,'' or Royal Crown Cola. His father's and his own early employer, the company is the locus on which his childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood centered and the subject of two of the longest pieces here. Lott is good at evoking the mysterious fraternal dynamic, the intensity of a father's love, the ambivalence of being a son and needing at once to accept parental guidance and to find one's own course. Some pieces succeed through use of a single clear image, as of the world ``growing blue'' for the author and his older son on a crisp December day spent outdoors following a rare South Carolina snowfall, a reflection that both gains context from and grounds subsequent recollections. In other chapters, though, Lott seems only to reach after epiphany, rather than arrive at it naturally. At its strongest, the writing focuses on concrete details, such as the author's childhood ritual of kneeling with his brothers at the curb, pouring out, in preparation for redemption, the returned soda bottles his dad brought back from his business rounds: Viewing the multibranded and hued soda swirling down the gutter, the boys ``watch the colors collide and move and mix,'' and out of such particulars a metaphor, unstated, is born—the river of soda as river of life. Lott has an instinct for the universal and sometimes finds it when he's not diverted by pursuit of everyday, less remarkable truths.
Pub Date: June 6, 1997
ISBN: 0-15-100262-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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