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WILD COAST

Name: WILD COAST
Author: John Gimlette
ISBN: 978-0-307-27253-9

TRAVELS ON SOUTH AMERICA'S UNTAMED EDGE

by John Gimlette ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 24, 2011

Colorful and immensely readable.

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A wonderfully entertaining account of a journey through one of the world’s least-known places.

Located in the northeast corner of South America and known collectively as Guiana, the nations of Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana are cut off from the rest of the continent by language and dense forests. With its history of slavery and civil wars, the region has left travelers from Evelyn Waugh to V.S. Naipaul unimpressed. Gimlette (Panther Soup: A European Journey in War and Peace, 2008, etc.), an insatiably curious storyteller, revels in the strange mix of people and traditions present in this “luminously lush and drenchingly fecund” world. Beginning in the 15th century, England, Holland, and France fought for more than 200 years over the sugar grown along the region’s 900-mile coast, leaving indelible imprints on these former colonies. Amid vivid descriptions of torrential rivers and golden grasslands that are home to some of the planet’s largest ants, otters and fish, the author recalls encounters with a stunning variety of intriguing characters: descendants of Scottish outlaws, Irish adventurers, Dutch conquerors and African-American slaves; miners, monks, rebels, sorcerers and pirates. Gimlette began his three-month trip in Georgetown, a slave-built city of canals, then headed into the bush and explored the remains of Guyana’s chief claim to fame, Jonestown, where 900 members of a religious cult committed suicide in 1978. The government has considered reopening the site to promote “dark tourism,” he writes. Pushing on by foot, boat and air, the author discovered strange forts, slave hideouts, remote Amerindian villages and French prisons that once held Captain Alfred Dreyfus and Henri Charrière (author of Papillon). All the while, he writes, creatures of the impenetrable forest sing, copulate, stink, glow and eat each other.

Colorful and immensely readable.

Pub Date: June 24, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-307-27253-9

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: June 9, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ELEPHANT COMPLEX
by John Gimlette

- BOOK REVIEW
AT THE TOMB OF THE INFLATABLE PIG
by John Gimlette

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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.