Colorful and immensely readable.
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
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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