Village Voice ``Problem Lady'' Heimel (Sex Tips for Girls, 1983) splices together short, fast takes on love, lovelessness, and life in big, bad New York City. In the most interesting of the 45 pieces reprinted here from the Voice, Playboy, and Vogue, Heimel lets it slip that N.Y.C. is beginning to scare her. And it's not merely that bridge-and- tunnel people are ruining the atmosphere at Nell's or that importers from Long Island and Nebraska are dressing in black, the cherished outlaw-artist color of the city. Now that ``nobody but college kids goes to nightclubs,'' Heimel is letting herself feel real fear: ``Every day I'm afraid I'm going to die hideously and be mentioned in the New York Post,'' she writes in a piece that mirrors the kind of surreal and apocalyptic small talk that New Yorkers dish out to each other on particularly bad days. ``I'm convulsed with fear and grief over the children who have been shot accidentally in drug-related gunplay.'' Heimel is also afraid of ``the New Coldness,'' the passionless careerism of the twentysomething generation. She is sick of co-dependency and sick of men who ask women out on dates only to go home with someone else. Despite her near-obsessive fear of not finding a decent man in this hellishly strange city, Heimel is still the cleareyed, let's-be-real ``Problem Lady,'' still tolerant of her impractical and idealistic friends. In short, she's now able to marry her head and her heart, showing us that she's a little sadder and wiser but still-crazy-after-all-these-years. A little wan, a little thin and repetitive in places, but still good downtown-Manhattan wit.
Pub Date: May 4, 1991
ISBN: 0-87113-444-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1991
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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