This delightful collection of garden writings edited by Garmey, a travel, food, and gardening writer, is just what’s hoped for in a sampler: each bite is a likely pleasure, with a couple of duds thrown in to forestall complacency. Garmey has put together 63 pieces, many of them snippets from larger works (there are a few poems—Homer, Marvell, Pope, Schuyler—and newspaper articles), from writers rich in quirk and wit, and with dirt under their fingernails. They discourse here in a nonprescriptive way about the pleasures and foibles of gardening. The names are by and large familiar: Eleanor Perenyi writes about her stream of lunatic, incompetent, and tragic garden helpers, and Maribel Osler serves up a not-so-gentle plea for chaos. Henry Mitchell’s lament on the weather is so dry it’s in danger of spontaneously combusting (“As I write this, on June 29, it’s about time for another summer storm to smash the garden to pieces”). There is Michael Pollan on Marx and Freud in the rose garden, and Allen Lacy cutting rough: “Let me dwell for a moment on one plant I especially detest—the hydrangea.” Less household names are equally engaging, such as Cynthia Kling on gardening as a contentious blood sport, or Julian Meade’s nonconformist salute, “The more I hear of Horticulture, the more I like plain gardening,” for the “slipshod method suits me better.” Even fusty old Gertrude Jekyll and sniffy Vita Sackville-West are bearable since they are given just a little page space. Only Sara Stein’s predictable item on weeds and Lauren Springer’s uninspired ode to autumn and its “frost-tolerant annuals” and “lingering pastel perennials” are true disappointments, but then it’s easy enough to turn the page and move on to the well-turned earth of E.B. White or Jamaica Kincaid. A fun gathering of garden eccentrics and cranks of every radius.
Pub Date: Jan. 15, 1999
ISBN: 1-56512-181-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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