Facing his own autumnal milestone, a 50-year-old novelist takes time to pursue a lifelong dream: ``to spend three months focused entirely on trying to do falconry right.'' O'Brien (In the Center of the Nation, 1991, etc.) has hunted with falcons since boyhood, when he tamed his first hawk and cobbled together a backyard mews from packing crates. He is now the owner of a ranch near the Black Hills, where he tenuously maintains a life focused on writing and hunting, and where he has better than a thousand acres of South Dakota prairie to work with. In a bid to come to grips with a midlife crisis, and to strengthen his attachment to his life on the land—and to the animals that share it with him—he indulges his falconry passion full-time for a season. Acquiring three fledgling peregrines (one of which develops into the best bird he has ever flown), O'Brien sets about teaching them to hunt sharptailed grouse. The step-by-step account of that delicate process is an eye-opening chronicle of interspecies cooperation and a gripping dramatization of how hard-won is the ideal balance between tameness and wildness that makes falconry possible. Myriad complications ensue—most notably the interference of a renegade Cooper's hawk, which threatens to scare off the falcons until tamed and added to the group. O'Brien counterbalances this narrative by tracing his development as an outdoorsman, eschewing easy sentimentality while forcefully reaffirming his love for nature and for his independent lifestyle. Particularly interesting is the story of how he introduced his wife, Kris (now an avid sportswoman), to hunting. Though O'Brien generally minimizes the Iron John angst, Kris's reasonableness is a welcome foil to his middle-aged craziness, which she reckons, rightly, to be a ``male thing.'' A ``why-do'' book that nevertheless offers plenty of how-to insight for falconry aficionados and newcomers alike—a beautifully wrought, demystifying look at the sport of hunting with hawks.
Pub Date: March 10, 1997
ISBN: 1-55821-456-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
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
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
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