An endearingly picaresque set of family memories.
A thousand comic anecdotes illuminate an ordinary life in this genial memoir.
Debut author Karp, born in Brooklyn and now retired in Boca Raton, Florida, uses the bare bones of his upbringing, two marriages, and careers in the garment industry, real estate, and insurance as a framework for his stories about assorted misadventures. Episodes include youthful hijinks in his family’s Brighton Beach apartment building (“many complaints came to my mother about her juvenile delinquent son flooding the basement with soapsuds”); pratfalls in the Army Reserve (caught tanning himself with a reflecting sheet, the author was accused of flashing signals to Russian submarines); parenting tasks (“I took my drunken seven-year-old daughter home and certainly never told her mother”); a workplace Heimlich maneuver (“A two-pound wedge of rare roast beef came flying out of his mouth and bounced along the floor like a hockey puck”); and romantic exploits as a rare and sought-after widower on the torrid Boca seniors dating scene (“We certainly did not agree on political philosophy, and when she asked me about a second date, I told her that I would be vacationing in North Korea”). Famous faces make cameo appearances—pop singer Neil Sedaka, a boyhood friend; candidate Barack Obama, who shook Karp’s hand at a campaign rally; movie star Rex Harrison, whom Karp spied being carried out of a Madrid restaurant dead drunk. Most of the vignettes are wryly humorous, but some have darker edges (“When they saw me, they stopped fighting, and when I realized that the man on top had a gun in his back pocket, I jumped back in the car”) while others, like a scene of the author corralling strolling musicians to serenade his wife, are tender and wistful. There’s not a lot of rumination in this album of breezy, cheerful, random snapshots, but together they add up to a vivid, warmhearted portrait of postwar Jewish-American life, full of hope and laughter.
An endearingly picaresque set of family memories.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64237-100-0
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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