by Edward A. Gargan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 30, 2002
For readers who share Gargan’s fascination with the region, an excellent travelogue.
A colorful and closely detailed account of travels along Southeast Asia’s contested lifeline, from former New York Times correspondent Gargan (China’s Fate, 1990).
Aiming for a more primal Asian experience than he’d experienced as a foreign bureau chief, Gargan planned a yearlong voyage combining scholarship, passion, and adventurous exploration on the Mekong River, which propelled him through China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Chinese-occupied Tibet. He depicts vast cultural differences and bitter political squabbles among these nations, bound together only geographically by the Mekong. Everywhere Gargan finds the unhealthy aftertaste of colonialism: “Whether the French, or the Americans who followed them, it was the foreign presence that had largely underpinned the course of events in 20th-century Southeast Asia, mostly for the worse.” Wisely keeping his journalistic eye trained on the human aspects of his journey, the author describes encounters with a variety of Asian citizens, from Tibetan master potters and Buddhist monks to rogues who pilot battered vessels, all of whom are pleased to practice their English on him. These conversations reveal resigned acceptance of authoritarian regimes incongruously combined with enthusiasm for European tourism and American pop culture. Although Gargan’s narrative meanders almost as slowly as his actual voyage, it accrues power as he travels through successive countries, assessing the harsh costs of war and kleptocracy. In Cambodia, for example, he finds the social destruction wrought by genocide lingering beneath the surface of optimistic recovery, while a popular nightclub in Saigon patterned after the film Apocalypse Now demonstrates that the Vietnamese remain dominated by the conflict they supposedly “won.” Elsewhere, the author’s portraits of impoverished rural Chinese and Tibetans chafing under the central Communist government’s Kafkaesque privations are extremely affecting, as is his journey through xenophobic, still-isolated Laos.
For readers who share Gargan’s fascination with the region, an excellent travelogue.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-40584-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
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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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