An outstanding memoir of young motherhood, love, political dedication, and madness in the 1930s. What Hettie Jones did for the New York bohemian scene of the 1960s, Davis (The Dark Way to the Plaza, 1968) has done for the leftist 1930s. Her tale begins in 1933, when her daughter Claudia is born in New York City. Her husband, British journalist Claud Cockburn, has already returned to Europe to cover the struggle against German and Spanish fascism for his insider bulletin, The Week, soon to become an indispensable source of war news for the English-speaking left worldwide. For a time Davis, herself a published writer and magazine promotion manager, hopes for their reunion; while waiting, she and Claudia go to stay with her sister in Virginia. There she gradually builds a life working for the Department of Agriculture and is introduced to Washington's intellectually dynamic liberal-left world. She falls in love with economist Hermann Brunck, and they move in together. Then they join the American Communist Party, and Davis's account of that experience is masterful; she captures the intrigue of underground culture and the seductive, even irresistible, logic of Communist solutions, as well as Party operatives' frightening refusal to see contradictions or hear dissent. Brunck has a sudden breakdown, described by Davis in intimate, painfully stirring detail—from his paranoid delusions (which came to seem increasingly sane with the unfolding of the intricate webs of conspiracy spun by the Party, government Red-baiting, and world politics) to their moments of sexual passion in the mental hospital. Her conversations with both Freudian doctors and Party comrades reveal intelligent people participating in terrifyingly rigid thought systems, yet she reduces no one to caricature. Davis's memoir of her struggle to think for herself while buffeted by love and ideology is an agonizingly human account of one of history's most tormented decades.
Pub Date: Nov. 21, 1994
ISBN: 1-883642-17-5
Page Count: 341
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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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