An anthology of Christmas poetry, from Milton to Schnackenberg, that gives an appealing twinkle to many familiar ornaments by hanging them with a tasteful selection of contemporary pieces and older, often neglected works that deserve the fresh polish they receive here. The ordering of the poems according to traditional tropes of the season (Annunciation and Advent, Nativity, Christmastide, etc.) produces many rich juxtapositions. This is especially true of the section entitled —Nativity,— where the trumpet-blasts of Milton’s —On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity— find their subdued and elegiac echo in Eliot’s canonical —Journey of the Magi.— Yeats’s intensely idiosyncratic brand of theology is nowhere more apparent than in his rendering of Mary, who accepts the divine seed not with the humility of Christian tradition, but instead with an occult appreciation for —the terror of all terrors that I bore/The Heavens in my womb.— As Hollander and McClatchy note in their spare introduction, Christmas as we know and celebrate it is an invention of the latter half of the 19th century; Tennyson, Rossetti and even Thackeray receive their proper space. Less happily, however, the longest section, —Christmas Songs and Carols,— consists primarily of silly jingles, uninspired bits of Victorian sentimentality that will, in any case, be known to most already. Still, the selection is varied enough to include irreverent pieces by Morris Bishop and Phyllis McGinley, as well as a number of caustic, even dour offerings, such as Achebe’s —Christmas in Biafra— and Hill’s —Christmas Trees,— where the anti-theological theologian Bonhoeffer makes an appearance, quite as unexpectedly as a fat man in the fireplace. As with any bright scatter beneath the tree, this one has its disappointments and redundancies, but the spirit of the collection is generous and has a delightful quality of surprise.
Pub Date: Nov. 13, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-40789-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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