The whole project is just unhinged enough to provide one of those gladdening, unself-consciously idiosyncratic travel...
A strange and singular search for traces of a woman rumored to have walked from New York City to Siberia some 75 years ago.
This much is (maybe) known: During the years 1927 and 1928, a woman by the name of Lillian Alling traveled north on foot along the underconstruction telegraph line that would eventually run through British Columbia, the Yukon, Alaska, and on to Siberia. Homesick for her native land, the diminutive Russian had walked from New York, scantily provisioned and clad. Hard facts concerning this far-north legend were just as scant, Australian writer Pybus learns. Pybus tries to settle a few questions before she leaves her Tasmanian home, plowing into genealogical and immigration records that lead her to decide Alling was probably a Jewish woman fleeing the traumatized shtetls of the Pale to end up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Unimpressed, she headed home, but why, oh why, the author asks in her easy, agreeable voice, why walk? Why return to Russia at the dawn of two decades of Stalinist repression? Pybus embarks on a road trip following Alling’s ever-fainter tracks. Her volatile, adventurous traveling companion Gerry provides much of the color commentary, offering advice like, “Ya gotta learn to take risks, Cassandra. Do the unexpected. Need to get your knickers in a twist.” But Gerry has some food issues (she likes her laxatives), and her attitude begins to grate on her friend’s nerves. While Gerry complains that “the trouble with this country is that it is so fucking empty,” Pybus is enthralled by the landscape and its social/environmental history, which she serves forth in modest, irresistible portions. Along the way, the Alling legend proves incapable of sustaining scrutiny, and a more reasonable explanation emerges.
The whole project is just unhinged enough to provide one of those gladdening, unself-consciously idiosyncratic travel narratives that are all too rare.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2004
ISBN: 1-56858-290-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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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