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
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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