You might have to be a woman to appreciate the humor and poignancy here, but women will.
An adaptation of performance pieces from Ensler's Obie Award–winning one-woman show, inspired by several hundred interviews the playwright had with women about their genitals.
The work, Ensler says, is intended to free women from the shame many have been taught to feel regarding their vaginas and, by extension, their sexuality. It's crucial, she says, "for women to tell their stories, to share them with other people....Our survival as women depends on this dialogue.'' The monologues (which range from a painful account of rape to a droll record of a woman learning to really see her vagina for the first time, in a "vagina workshop'') vary greatly in effect, and other portions of the work (which run from character monologues to interpolations by Ensler to lists drawn from her questions to women, such as, "What does a vagina smell like?'') are fragmentary.
You might have to be a woman to appreciate the humor and poignancy here, but women will.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-375-75052-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
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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