Club; author tour)
A candid, often clich‚d, but always comic frolic revealing the inner life of girls, dates, brides, wives and mothers.
This is Macsai's virgin book, but she's been around the block as an award-winning NPR radio writer and producer. A taste of her wit and scope is seen in chapter headings: "The Blunder Years," "The Ova Office," "Vanity Hair," "Love and Hisses," "Till Death Do Us Part (At Least 50% of the Time)," and "From Here to Maternity." While the recollections of anxious adolescence are evocative and genuine, they echo familiar teen TV series and movies. Saving this farrago from mediocrity are perceptive observations, for instance, about the moment "when the music of AM radio starts to replace the blood in your veins and you could never hear it again without being physically moved." Macsai is too eager a victim of men to be a feminist, but she extols the value of girlfriends and prefers "girl crushes" to "boy crushes" for their lifelong loyalty. Especially when it comes to her love of flings ("all the thrill of an affair without the home wrecking"), the author can embarrass us with her lack of self-respect. Like a female Woody Allen, she turns her neuroses into entertainment: "What could be more exciting than the adorable way he never calls you back?" Somehow, this Jewish girl looking for that prime catch or bad-boy fling finds herself dating a fanatic who thanks Jesus for a great cup of coffee. Her self-deprecating humor gets better with age, when it involves fighting weight gain and drooping breasts and tolerating husbands’ bellyaching and babies’ spitting up. Children are the last and largest item on Macsai's list of things that test female stoicism by passing through the vagina—after menstrual blood, swabs, yeast, medication, fingers, penises, and birth-control devices. Can we talk? An irresistible invitation from the Nineties successor to Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers. (Cosmopolitan Book
Club; author tour)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-019101-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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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