The affable Peterson (Visions of Caliban, with Jane Goodall, 1993, etc.) takes a leisurely amble through equatorial Africa, drinking in the atmosphere and poking into the lands of the chimpanzee. Peterson goes out into the field to get his periodic dose of primates (he might teach English at Tufts, but his writing and research center on great apes), and he displays an unusual talent for travel, exploring that ``blissful interior twilight where sense is woven into nonsense and words dissolve into nonwords.'' He has the knack of taking the everyday and making it memorable: the slow pecking sounds of a typewriter filtering out a window; a woman, child strapped to her back, bending and washing her feet in a small stream; lazy, random conversations with other travelers. Urban Africa gives him the willies, with beggars here, shysters there, thugs tending every corner, bureaucrats who live by the bribe. The forest is more his bailiwick, though poachers and the ever-present bureaucrats vex him. Peterson has a serious fascination with chimps and renders their lives with loving strokes: their Machiavellian talents and flirtations, the beauty of the matriarchal society in which adult males, since they can never be sure who fathered a given child, protect all the community's young. Lastly, Peterson gives a glimpse of his paradise: an enchanted forest, a patch of genuine terra incognita, in northern Congo. Here, in the Ndoki forests, he gets a taste of the truly wild, where gorillas and chimps and monkeys have probably never laid eyes on man, and where Peterson has some close, very close, encounters with his quarry. Peterson brings a wealth of good humor, a snappy irony, and a laid-back style to what were surely travels with a hard edge of difficulty. It's easy to admire the man and easier still to admire this droll, shrewd piece of travel writing.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-201-40737-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
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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