by David Yeadon ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2006
All the plights and possibilities of traditional life, viewed through an exquisitely sensitive wide-angle lens. (39 line...
Yeadon (Seasons in Basilicata, 2004, etc.) chronicles a garrulous, well-spent year on the Scottish island where the famous tweed is woven.
Harris was tailor-made for Yeadon, a writer whose affinities have always veered toward wild, remote and wracked landscapes. “So what is the lure?” he asks. “Try silence, wilderness, solitude, dramatic soul-nurturing scenery, and a sense of coming home to something bold, basic, and honest.” Silence there may have been, but there is also lots of good talking in these pages. Yeadon can sing the glories of Harris tweed’s look and feel, but he wouldn’t have known about fixing lichen-colored dyestuff to the wool with fermented urine unless he talked to the weaver. He wouldn’t be able to explain the art of poaching unless he spoke to the poacher, or the nature of lobstering the treacherous channel called the Minch unless he shared the fisherman’s boat, or the chinks appearing in the island’s strict observance of the Sabbath unless he was hoisting a wee dram on the very Sunday. Yeadon’s poetic prose sings the beauty of tiny dark lochans, wild glens and corries, the call of a corncrake, a song by a peat fire. And he displays a formidable talent for describing scenery, of which Harris possesses a fantastic array, from Caribbean-blue waters to lunar moorlands, and for capturing a quality of light, from pearl to lemon-silver, that would make Parisians envious. From his chats with people who live on the isles—crofters or painters, shopkeepers or boat-builders, fishing guides or writers—emerges the hopeful sense that Harris will not lose its distinctiveness, that it will remain a place central to its own existence, with its stories and whiskey, fitful weather, standing stones and cottage-based tweed industry.
All the plights and possibilities of traditional life, viewed through an exquisitely sensitive wide-angle lens. (39 line drawings)Pub Date: July 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074181-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
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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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
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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