An attractive coffee-table album of canine photos with a vibrant and spiritually uplifting setting.
A photography book celebrates dogs and their cherished status in a Buddhist society.
Chambers, a world traveler, salutes the isolated Himalayan nation of Bhutan for its natural beauty and the “vibrations” imparted to its inhabitants by “the light and teachings of the Buddha.” Chief among these teachings is a reverence for all beings capable of feeling and suffering, especially dogs. The Bhutanese, she writes, believe that canines contain the reincarnated souls of human ancestors; thus, killing even strays is forbidden because it will prevent “that being from living out its Karma.” The book mainly consists of the author’s color photographs of Bhutanese dogs that indeed seem to have it pretty good. They loll happily about, resting on sidewalks, staircases, mountain pathways, and rocky outcroppings—and in gardens and fields and outside temples—lying unconscious on their sides or surveying the world in Sphinx-like postures of alert repose, occasionally allowing a human to pet them. The mutts are a motley black and white and tan, ears pointed or floppy, some of them embodying Buddhist virtues according to the captions. “Attentiveness” is illustrated by a dog with its ear cocked; “trust” by a pooch sleeping peacefully under a car in disregard of the danger of being run over; and “love” by an adorable canine gazing into the camera with golden, liquid eyes. Some photos have other subjects, including karmically underprivileged pack mules and, of course, humans, who appear in a number of portraits featuring Bhutanese laypeople and monks in colorful traditional garments. The images skillfully showcase the variety and grandeur of the Bhutanese terrain, with its majestic snow-capped peaks, wide skies, piney hillsides, and verdant valleys. Chambers’ photos are notable for a slight blurriness and an unusual color palette, with the green of foliage being washed out while throbbing blues dominate in clothing, distant landscapes, shadows, and even black fur. It’s a striking effect that looks almost ultraviolet and gives many of the photos an eerie charge. Her compositions are not the most inspired—just pooches lounging around—but they will look like nirvana to some connoisseurs of canine glory.
An attractive coffee-table album of canine photos with a vibrant and spiritually uplifting setting.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982232-70-2
Page Count: 66
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engrossing, rigorously documented study of a 20th-century literary trailblazer.
A penetrating exploration of the life and work of the acclaimed novelist, memoirist, and pioneering figure in gay culture.
While Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) may be best known for Goodbye to Berlin, which drew on his experiences in Weimar-era Berlin and inspired the musical Cabaret, this new biography by Bucknell, director of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, astutely highlights the considerable merits of his other novels and candid autobiographical works. The author renders a sweeping portrait of Isherwood's remarkable life journey, during which he forged indelible connections with many of the era's preeminent literary and artistic figures. Early on, Isherwood moved within an influential circle of writers that included W.H. Auden, E.M. Forster, and Steven Spender. In 1939, he moved to Hollywood and pursued screenwriting, while also initiating a spiritual conversion to Vedanta under the guidance of Indian monk Swami Prabhavananda. Over the ensuing years, his vast circle expanded, bringing in Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and David Hockney, among others. Bucknell dedicates perhaps too many pages to Isherwood's early years, privileged upbringing, Cambridge education, and elements of his complex family dynamics (including his father's death in World War II and his suffocating relationship with his mother), but this detailed exploration lays the foundation for her explorations of her subject’s later writing and the complexities that shaped his intimate relationships, particularly his romances with various men at different stages of his life, most enduringly with artist Don Bachardy. Throughout, Bucknell urgently draws attention to Isherwood’s courageous life as an openly gay man and his vital role in advancing gay liberation through his writing: "He saw from his career's outset that he must make homosexuality attractive to mainstream audiences if he was to change their view of it, and he worked to do this in all his writing in different ways.”
An engrossing, rigorously documented study of a 20th-century literary trailblazer.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780374119362
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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