Caro's travelogue incorporates, with only partial success, the sensibilities of a dogged historical researcher and a chatty tour guide in its trip through French history from Roman Gaul to Louis XIV's court. Caro's goal is to bring to life the star-rated sites in typical guidebooks and to translate the deep French sense of the country's history for an American mind. With a deliberately chronological itinerary, she begins in the Provence of the Roman Empire; continues through medieval Languedoc, Dordogne of the Hundred Years War, and the French Renaissance's Loire; and finishes in Louis XIV's Paris and its environs. Along with many travelers in France (and her husband, biographer Robert Caro, who joins her), she takes in such famous sights as the Pont du Gard, the pilgrimage church of Conques, Bourges, the chÉteau of Blois, and Versailles. Her personal familiarity with a vacationer's instincts means that her routes are well chosen, with a few detours around touristicated places and some chance finds in pleasant hotels and restaurants. (Her own tourist anecdotes, though, are the stuff of rec-room slide shows.) While researched satisfactorily, her approach to site-specific history tends to the parochial, and without an authority's ability to synthesize place and past, even the most notable locales cannot convey the complexities of the Wars of Religion or the Albigensian Crusade. Although outdoing the average French tour guide in information (and congeniality), Caro still has the taste of one in her attachment to the picturesque, whether in architecture and scenery or historical personalities and events: Her portraits of the vastly different Joan of Arc and Catherine de' Medici are alike in their romanticism, as are her snapshots of the Roman Arch of Triumph at Orange and the Castle of UssÇ. Despite her sizeable bibliography, Caro's evocation of French history in her travels is only marginally deeper than that of the Michelin guides. (25 line drawings, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-26672-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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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