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WITHIN TUSCANY

Name: WITHIN TUSCANY
Author: Matthew Spender
ISBN: 0-670-83836-5

REFLECTIONS ON A TIME AND PLACE

by Matthew Spender ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1992

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An expatriate British sculptor's eccentric view of his adopted home of Siena, Italy. Spender is marvelous when he describes the landscape shimmering with heat and layered with history; when he offers an artist's insight into Italian art (``Michelangelo is the first artist who makes us aware that there is as much to be said by not completing a work as by completing it''); when he describes the ancient methods still in use for making olive oil; and, above all, when he offers colorful, sharp, funny sketches of the ordinary people who are his neighbors. His description of playing in the local village band is a high point of poignancy and comedy. Spender bores occasionally, though, with desultoriness: In his wish to avoid writing a standard guidebook, he offers a rambling, highly personal collection made up of this impression, that historical rumination (was Shelley drowned by accident or killed by Italian robbers? What were the Etruscans really like? What were the significant events in the life of Savonarola?) that never quite cohere and that are uneven in their interest. Bewilderment assails the reader with sentences like, ``Art is often a disease that life acquires by contagion,'' and in hints about the author's ``long and peculiar marriage'' and his dalliance—lustful, paternal, unconsummated—with one Vittoria. She's a young Italian woman who appears in the narrative early on with no introduction and accompanies Spender on many explorations, but who's presented only in frustratingly impressionistic glimpses. The fascination she holds for Spender is never accessible to the reader. Spender is at his best when neither dryly detached nor too personal, when he presents the memorable people and the artistic and natural beauties of the region and suggests the tension between craving the privacy of an exile's life and suffering the loneliness of being a perpetual outsider. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs- -not seen.)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-670-83836-5

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
A HOUSE IN ST JOHN'S WOOD
by Matthew Spender

- BOOK REVIEW
FROM A HIGH PLACE
by Matthew Spender

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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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.