A swashbuckling maritime reminiscence with picaresque edges crafted by a gifted writer.
A young, intrepid adventurer escapes his quirky family to discover a life at sea in this Vietnam era memoir.
Emmy-winning filmmaker and author McCarey (Islands Under Fire, 2012) grew up yearning to escape the dankness and insularity of New York state’s Hudson Valley and the weirdness of his Irish family. His father, whom McCarey calls “the Artist,” was a ne’er-do-well, goldbricking cartoon illustrator and admirer of the “Prince Valiant” strip. The Artist influenced his son with his tales of ocean voyages that happened only in his own head. The author’s kleptomaniac mom, Maggie, taught him how to steal, cheat in school, and ditch class. He pervades this narrative of his call to the seafaring life with a wry and insightful awareness of his own and others’ foibles. Smart and capable but an academic disaster, McCarey decided to go to New York Maritime College, a decision celebrated by Maggie but scorned by the Artist: “He ranted about the waste of my ‘precious god-given talent.’ What talent? I wondered.” Replete with many literary references gleaned from his reading at sea during slack times, the author shows a love of sentence fragments that he deploys to great effect in the tales of his many merchant marine voyages, often to Vietnam, aboard rusty hulks shipping material to the war, which he calls “the Beast.” At one point, he becomes interested in the “intriguing hints of life below the water’s surface: A patch of ocean boiling with baitfish. The purple sails of Portuguese man-of wars drifting on the Gulf Stream or moon jellies pulsing in the South China Sea.” The terrifying dangers of loose munitions in the hold during a roiling ocean, his encounters with colorful characters both at sea and in ports of call, his telling observations of human nature, the mindless routine life aboard ship that McCarey finds amusing—all of this the author recounts with humor and an uncanny ear for speech. He uses various dialects, a stylistic habit that may not appeal to every reader. But this is a minor flaw for an author whose gift is rendering the stuff of life on the ocean into vivid and telling prose.
A swashbuckling maritime reminiscence with picaresque edges crafted by a gifted writer.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-889901-66-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: The Glencannon Press
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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