by Marianne M. Jennings ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2012
A fine, moving meditation on mourning and the wisdom it brings to the living.
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A bereaved mother finds healing at her child’s graveside in this debut memoir of grief and consolation.
After burying her 19-year-old daughter, the author, a professor of business ethics, visited her grave every day for a year and a half. The ritual gave expression to her deep sadness—visits sometimes ended with her sobbing—but as time went on, it also helped her gain perspective and a measure of comfort after her loss. The Mesa, Arizona, cemetery where Claire Elizabeth is interred turned out to be a rather lively place: Jennings met and bonded with other parents and grandparents of lost children; received advice from the sympathetic, seen-it-all gravediggers, whom she dubbed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern after the hapless henchmen in Hamlet; examined the quirky culture of grave decorations, which ran the gamut from wreaths and wind chimes to model trucks and votive Bud Lights; took in a raucous, dancing Tongan funeral; and communed with a Mexican-American clan who gathered for a weekly barbecue at the grave of a 12-year-old boy. “The cemetery,” Jennings writes, “unconventional though it may have been, became my coping mechanism, my counseling, my psychotropic medication, and all-in-one-form of extreme therapy.” Interspersed among the cemetery scenes is a delicate, fragmented portrait of Claire, a profoundly disabled woman with the mental development of an infant whose seemingly weightless existence left a lasting impression on her family. Jennings’ search for meaning in her experience draws on an eclectic array of thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson, C.S. Lewis, the book of Job, Mormon spiritual writers, and Mick Jagger. In this luminous memoir, she looks for a middle ground between the stoicism of the prophet Ezekiel, who buried his wife at night and returned to duty in the morning, and the paralyzing sorrow of Dickens’ Miss Havisham, who spends a lifetime in seclusion after getting stood up at the altar. Jennings finds and conveys it in prose that is sensitive and deeply felt but also laced with good sense and humor.
A fine, moving meditation on mourning and the wisdom it brings to the living.Pub Date: April 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-615-58330-3
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Woodchip Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
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
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
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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