Shrewd entertainment.
A transplanted, middle-aged Englishman hitchhikes the length and breadth of his adopted country.
Bennett wanted serendipity to guide his ramble about the two big islands that make up New Zealand, thus his decision to become a pilgrim of the thumb. “I’ve seen much of this country over the years, but I have never traveled merely to observe it,” he writes, so on this trip he worked hard at the exigent art of seeing: everything from muttering magpies, glow-worm caves and bad hotels to high-country sheep stations, trout streams and a sky the color of a thrush egg. With an unselfconscious, wry tone, that carries the clarity of the plainspoken, Bennett neatly delineates landscapes: the feral indifference of the wild West Coast of South Island; the dwarfing, wordless northernmost outpost, where two oceans clash. The drivers who picked him up gave Bennett insights into the towns and countryside he would never have been able to discern otherwise. But what really got to him was the fleeting intimacy they shared; each of his hitches was like a confessional on wheels, a psychiatric couch barreling through the landscape. He learned things about his traveling companions that they likely never shared with their mates, and if they turned creepy sometimes, at least he knew that soon he would never see them again. No national character emerges in his narrative, but readers do get a good, long look through the eyes of working-class New Zealanders, as truck drivers were Bennett’s most common tour guides. As they got on with their work, he was “swanning, going where I wish at the pace that I wish, and exploiting their goodwill to travel for free.”
Shrewd entertainment.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-6357-X
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Scribner UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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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