Would that you had a country like Wales to call your own, one so unblinkered and time-racked as the author’s.
A shrewd and sorry, splendorous and celebratory, portrait of Wales, from one of its own.
The Welsh have a strong dislike to being observed, even by a native son like Rogers (The Green Lane to Nowhere, 2003), let alone occupied by a foreign presence: “What had the English ever done to the Welsh?” ask the untutored, and Rogers reminds them: “Conquest, ethnic cleansing, then colonisation with the attitudes that bred in coloniser and colonised, that's all.” But Rogers is not here to wail and moan, but rather to paint a picture of how Wales is faring these days. Or at least how the town and environs he grew up in has weathered the last half of a century: What has become of the language, the traditions, all the physical and dispositional manifestations of the place? Remarkably, despite the best efforts of both the English and compliant overseers, the language has held on—the great lyric language of the “oldest vernacular literature in Europe” (even if it possesses “no word for orgasm”). In a voice that’s wary, and an eye that’s versed and unwilling to genuflect before sentiment or glaze before personal history, he recounts the history of his house, his town, his school and neighboring lands, all rich with fertile irony: “This turns on the purest elements of old romance, a lost palace, the last prince of a ruined dynasty. . . . But chiefly it is the story of a woman who, two years ago, bought a chicken farm in north Wales.” There might be some moss on Rogers, but he’s also sitting next to you at the pub. He’ll tell you about Martin Borman's phonebook, located nearby, or the living archaeology of a coracleman and his demands for the river Towy. There are museums, but mostly the everyday.
Would that you had a country like Wales to call your own, one so unblinkered and time-racked as the author’s.Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-85410-949-9
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Aurum/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
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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