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VANILLA BEANS AND BRODO

Name: VANILLA BEANS AND BRODO
Author: Isabella Dusi
ISBN: 0-7432-3461-8

REAL LIFE IN THE HILLS OF TUSCANY

by Isabella Dusi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2002

Dusi gives Montalcino a real presence, but readers may wish she would stop talking long enough for them to smell the...

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A leisurely and comprehensive—perhaps too leisurely and comprehensive—catalogue of seasons in a Tuscan town, from Australian Dusi.

In 1994, Dusi and her husband Lou upped and moved to Montalcino, in Italy’s Tuscany, away from their unexceptional life in Australia. By their fifth year in town, Dusi felt embosomed enough in the town’s ways (“Isobel and Lou have become Isabella and Luigi and we have begun to find acceptance”) to give a faithful recording of a passing year. She starts with a walking tour of Montalcino, through time—for this is a town that has protective walls approaching a 1,000 years in age, and a history that pokes back a few more centuries—and space, reporting on every trattoria, osteria, and café, the composition and character of each of the quarters, right down to the origins of obscure street names. There are pleasures as old as the hills: plump figs stuffed with a walnut, biscuits of ground almond, orange peel, and honey—the whole cucina povera, which hardly seems such, especially when the local and noble Brunello is always close at hand, a wine considered the best Italy has to offer. There are archery contests pitting quarter against quarter, there are feast days and olive harvesting, hunts of wild boar and the “passive violence” of soccer matches, legends of betrayed women and woodcutters seeing the face of the Madonna in a tree trunk. Dusi’s telling of these events is not merely intimate; the detail is step-by-step, blow-by-blow. Almost every sentence feels (at least) a word too heavy—“A milky globe, crisply outlined, hangs in a velvet sky flooding ghostly shadows into lanes and bathing the soaring fortress walls in a silvery glow.” And Dusi’s irritating habit of appending English translations to Italian words is distracting: “When is the notaio, notary, arriving?”

Dusi gives Montalcino a real presence, but readers may wish she would stop talking long enough for them to smell the rosemary and garlic.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-7432-3461-8

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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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.