Vividly descriptive, but lacks a coherent structure and context.
Novelist and world traveler St. Aubin de Terán (Otto, 2006, etc.) provides a series of maze-like musings on her work in Mozambique.
After a financially devastating divorce, the author dove headlong into a new life of filmmaking and charity work. Upon meeting her current husband, a former news cameraman, St. Aubin de Terán was introduced to the beguiling shores and poverty-stricken people of Mozambique. It was here that she decided to focus her energies, initially planning a documentary but ultimately founding a college of tourism for the people of the Mossuril District. The book chronicles her work there, giving insight into the land and lives of a people on the far edge of Africa. With colorful, lively language, the author eloquently describes the Mozambicans’ attitudes toward everything from cell phones to mangrove trees, conveying a palpable sense of their culture and lifestyle. But like the tangled roots of the mangroves the author so lushly describes, her narrative threatens to trap and confuse the reader in its convolutions. She often begins a chapter discussing one topic and then moves into a seemingly unrelated, or at least decidedly tangential, discussion. In “If Not Now, When?” she predictably recounts the events leading up to her decision to start her charity. By the end of the chapter, however, she wanders off into a lengthy discourse on cooking and food supplies. Because she moves rather aimlessly among various topics, providing little overarching framework or organization, it is difficult to figure out exactly how she got where she did and why. Her stream-of-consciousness style, while perhaps just as meandering and structureless as the sense of time she describes in Mozambique, often leads into knotted thickets of self-reflection.
Vividly descriptive, but lacks a coherent structure and context.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84408-300-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Virago/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2009
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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