Too long by half, and then again so. There are simply too many minor annoyances here, and not enough variety to fuel the...
A you-gotta-hand-it-to-'em story of building a new life and business in a foreign land that sinks in a quicksand of logorrhea.
Ever the entrepreneurs, the Blanchards sold their Vermont-based gourmet food business and poured the profits into a seaside restaurant on the sleepy but celebrity-strewn Caribbean island of Anguilla. As narrated by Melinda Blanchard, the story is launched with an unfortunate number of clichés ("As our taxi made its way westward, I counted the ways I loved this island") that gratefully subside, only to be replaced by writing that replicates the thought process enough to throw sand into even the most devout friend's eyes: "It's just too formal. Pretty but stiff. People come to this island to relax. I don't want our dining room to be hushed and uncomfortable. Guests need to feel more like they're at our house for dinner, rather than at a stuffy restaurant. Elegance, but no attitude." There are the standard bothers—“island time," customs agents, the unavailability of ingredients, the cistern running dry, and paying $215 to replace a $3 part—but Blanchard reminds readers often enough that "I felt unaccountably happy" and "I felt preposterously lucky." Comments, such as "This reminds me of that little restaurant in Nice" or "Bob suddenly remembered an East Hampton wedding we had attended at a magnificent beach house," fall like bricks; then Blanchard scrambles for some balance: "Bob was honored to be sharing fish soup with these men" (read: humble though they may be). Ultimately, the story settles down to one kitchen tale after another, some more amusing than others, although they begin to fade into each other after a while.
Too long by half, and then again so. There are simply too many minor annoyances here, and not enough variety to fuel the Blanchards' story and keep readers' interest turning over.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-609-60694-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
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
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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