Airy evocations of coasting the eastern seaboard from journalist-mariner Hayes. Hayes has gathered 33 fleeting pensÇes about her life with her husband aboard their trawler yacht as it plies the waters from Canada to Florida. The success of her quick, impressionistic style relies on a vivid summoning of atmosphere, and she delivers, with occasional lapses into wordiness and repetition. She tries her hand at describing most every experience a sailor in her patch might encounter short of mortal storm or accident. She has been caught in a vicious fetch and sailed “a perfect day or two in September when color is absolute.” There have been “onyx waters; jeweled coasts,” and there have been moments of peril: ominous monochromatic weather, gray seas piling up, when “the windows in the dwellings atop the Gurnet seemed, like horrified eyes, to watch our wallowing.” At times she appears to be overwhelmed by stimuli, as in the chapter composed entirely of micro-snippets strung together by ellipses. But she appears happier when the specific weight of an event is given a few sentences, then allowed to pass into the distance like a canal buoy. Striking an easy balance with the ruthlessness and discomfort and abominable motion are the sea’s sublimity, gifts of courage and patience, exotic topographies, and the elemental plowing through water and air. Much of her time is spent off the Maine coast (clearly one of her great loves), all lonely, water-gouged, and scented with fir, where the sheer number of coves and inlets, ledges and shifting bars, islands and lobster pots guarantees unexpected delights and rude surprises with every visit. Each of Hayes’s chapters, no matter what its tone or mood, is a brisk pick-me-up, an inducement to find oneself on a boat caught between “wakes wide as bridal trains and waves curving neatly away from a bow.”
Pub Date: April 23, 1999
ISBN: 1-891369-06-7
Page Count: 189
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
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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