It took newcomer O'Hara 25 years to compose this poke at Ireland’s edge, time for the events to become burnished. His...
Skillful piece of travel-writing from O’Hara, who walks around the coast rather than ride in the cart, “because I want to view old Ireland from donkey level” (or maybe he just can’t command the cart?).
It is 1979. O'Hara is a young man semi-fresh from Vietnam, an American in Ireland with an idea: take a donkey and a cart around Eire’s circumference. This notion comes to him in a pub, and some in attendance suggest “he’d be much like those wise men who climbed Faerymount one clear night in June, all in hopes of catching the rising moon in a burlap bag.” His aunt Cella is less poetic: “I think you're a half-boiled eejit!” But not really, for all and sundry think his adventure is pretty fine—and it is. Short of funds, O’Hara figures he’ll be a seanachie, who gets the 3 Bs (bed, bath, and beer) by telling stories. Actually, since newspapers across the country are following his progress, it’s celebrity that gets him a welcome most nights, though one woman tells him through the farmhouse door, “I don't care if you’re John the Baptist proclaiming ‘the Good News,’ you simple gomeral! Now, get, or ye’ll be gimping off, I promise.” It is a slow and marvelous journey under dove-gray skies and beside forlorn Norman towers, through the “hollow bright fog” of sun and mist, reeling from the collywobbles of a bad bottle of stout, along a pilgrim’s path of holy wells and beehive cells. Everywhere there are intimate local vignettes and good wishes: “Now, safe home, and may a gallery of saints protect you” are the chosen parting words of a morning.
It took newcomer O'Hara 25 years to compose this poke at Ireland’s edge, time for the events to become burnished. His writing is all the better for it; like the Irish fog, it's both glowing and lightly pushed by an unacknowledged melancholy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-765-30983-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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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