An engrossing, vivid inquiry into a man and his magisterial creation.
The story behind one of the world’s most unique buildings.
The bold opening sentence of art historian van Hensbergen’s (Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-century Icon, 2004, etc.) intoxicating book about one of the world’s most “puzzling” and “quixotic” structures instantly engages: “Gaudí, possibly more than any other architect in history, has been totally misunderstood.” The author writes that Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926), like his buildings, was often seen as “far too eccentric, too bizarre and in Catalonia—the land of Salvador Dalí—almost too obviously surrealist and actually downright strange.” To understand the method behind his architectural madness and his iconic Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family, it’s necessary to understand Gaudí’s profound Catholic faith. Van Hensbergen takes us on a tour of the building, pointing out its unique and distinctive features, from the roof’s complex vaulting, like an “inverted egg box,” to Gaudí’s invention of the centenary arch, which miraculously holds up the roof without buttressing via inverted chainlike links. When finished, 18 towers will “crowd together and push up in unison like a family in stone.” Gaudí drew on nature—snake skeletons, springtime shoots, and the gnarls and knots on oak trees—revealed through “the omnipresence of God’s guiding hand”—to fashion the ornaments. They “had to speak.” The idea for the basilica came from Joseph Maria Bocabella, a small-time Barcelona religious bookseller. Gaudí took over the commission in 1883 shortly after the first architect was let go. He finished the crypt in 1889, but his “next decision almost defies logic.” He decided to focus on just one facade, meaning that he “would only ever see a fraction of the entire building finished within his own lifetime.” They hope to finish the basilica by 2026, the 100th anniversary of Gaudí’s death. Van Hensbergen’s rich, poetic prose is perfectly suited to describe this unprecedented work of art.
An engrossing, vivid inquiry into a man and his magisterial creation.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-781-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he...
The latest from French writer/filmmaker Carrère (My Life as a Russian Novel, 2010, etc.) is an awkward but intermittently touching hybrid of novel and autobiography.
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he describes powerfully. Carrère and his partner, Hélène, then return to Paris—and do so with a mutual devotion that's been renewed and deepened by all they've witnessed. Back in France, Hélène's sister Juliette, a magistrate and mother of three small daughters, has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that crippled her in adolescence. After her death, Carrère decides to write an oblique tribute and an investigation into the ravages of grief. He focuses first on Juliette's colleague and intimate friend Étienne, himself an amputee and survivor of childhood cancer, and a man in whose talkativeness and strength Carrère sees parallels to himself ("He liked to talk about himself. It's my way, he said, of talking to and about others, and he remarked astutely that it was my way, too”). Étienne is a perceptive, dignified person and a loyal, loving friend, and Carrère's portrait of him—including an unexpectedly fascinating foray into Étienne and Juliette's chief professional accomplishment, which was to tap the new European courts for help in overturning longtime French precedents that advantaged credit-card companies over small borrowers—is impressive. Less successful is Carrère's account of Juliette's widower, Patrice, an unworldly cartoonist whom he admires for his fortitude but seems to consider something of a simpleton. Now and again, especially in the Étienne sections, Carrère's meditations pay off in fresh, pungent insights, and his account of Juliette's last days and of the aftermath (especially for her daughters) is quietly harrowing.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9261-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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