"Some Enchanted Evening'' it isn't, but Kernahan opens up new vistas for those intrepid adventurers who may wish to follow...
Journalist Kernahan spotlights trouble in paradise in this highly insightful portrait of French Polynesia.
Kernahan spent much time in the South Seas, as a young wife and mother cruising with the Rotary Club in 1959, convalescing after a motorcycle accident in 1965, back the following year as something more than a tourist, traveling and working there for the next 30 years. Kernahan feels her relationship with the South Sea natives truly began when she was in the hospital, where she saw the islanders without their jovial exterior, in pain or tending their sick relatives. After that she delved further into the Polynesian national character, trying to discover things the Bureau of Tourism wanted to keep under wraps. Kernahan's attempts to go through official channels were often frustrated, but in the end she did manage to find out more than the average visitor. She stayed in natives' homes; she discussed politics with them. She discovered them to be not at all the childlike savages of popular myth. In fact, she declares, it is the European population of the islands who are the savages. Kernahan learned of the half-Polynesian political activist Pouvanaa a Oopa, a WWI hero who became the first Polynesian to win a seat in the French National Assembly and was eventually exiled and jailed in France; of the nuclear testing on the islands, which she considers a disaster, but which some natives look upon as an economic boon. And she meets a wide array of colorful characters, like Susy No Pant, a uniquely Polynesian hooker; Pa Tepaeru-a-Tupe Ariki Lady Davis, a very domestic South Pacific queen; and Hinano, who posed as a Polynesian dancer in California until she was discovered to be the half-black daughter of an L.A. whore.
"Some Enchanted Evening'' it isn't, but Kernahan opens up new vistas for those intrepid adventurers who may wish to follow her.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1995
ISBN: 1-85984-978-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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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