However lyrically written, Nekola's memoir of a St. Louis girlhood in the 50's offers a pitiless assessment of the hard- working, emotionally austere family that produced her. Nekola (Schweitzer Fellow/William Paterson College) was raised in an extended family of limited means, modest goals, and unfulfilled ambitions. Among its members were a resourceful grandmother who secretly drew dress designs; maiden aunts seemingly without personal histories; an educated mother who wore white gloves to the butcher shop and died before she could write the children's stories she planned on; a traveling and alcoholic father who left an incomplete, idealized autobiography written for a night-school class; a reclusive brother who dropped out of school and life; and a manic-depressive sister who walked away one day and died homeless and addicted at age 46. Nekola writes powerfully about the small things—clothes, food, family activities, the can opener with a lifetime guarantee that her father bought her, a bicycle excursion, her mother's recipe box, and the happiest minutes of her life, when, in 1960, her family gathered to watch an eclipse of the moon and became their ``original selves,'' ``five moon-gazing animals.'' But her tale is flawed by an objective narration that holds up her life like a jar of homemade jelly to be inspected for clarity and color, by her admitted failure to find in anyone an inner life, and by her attempt to turn her story into a feminist tract, even though there is no power to struggle over. In the world Nekola depicts—as opposed to the judgments she imposes on it—the struggle for men and women alike is one for simple survival, biological and emotional: an unheroic marathon in which adults perform the necessary tasks of domesticity.
Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03433-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
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
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