A worthy concept brought low by abrasive style and slapdash organization.
Feral dogs have their day in this overextended exploration of East St. Louis and its #1 Dog Lover.
News flash: packs of wild dogs are roaming America’s inner cities. Journalist Roth discovered this fact while profiling local fixture Randy Grim for the St. Louis Riverfront Times. Driving a beat-up VW bus, maniacally devoted to the unclaimed canines, and possessed of a catalogue of germ phobias that prevents him from eating at buffets or touching escalator handrails, Grim surely seemed a likely subject for a newspaper profile. But Roth has stretched what could have been an engaging feature essay into something that can’t quite hold its own weight. She begins well enough, if melodramatically, taking the reader along with Grim as he prowls abandoned lots on a snowy night. He pounds up staircases and slips on the ice while an uncomprehending animal attempts to escape its hunter, who illustrates all the while the qualities needed (patience, fearlessness) for a job nobody wants. Grim then recalls his first rescue (which landed him with 13 puppies needing to be fed with an eyedropper every two hours for weeks) and the effect of his new obsession on family and friends. With trademark newspaper prose—the sentence fragment, the one-sentence paragraph, the particular affection for “gray” as a descriptor—Roth clatters her way through Grim’s stalking of one particular pack and his efforts to publicize the plight of the abandoned animals. Along the way, she drops in lessons on the likely evolution of domesticated dogs, the prevalence of dog-fighting, the formation of pack mentality, and the thought processes of wild and domesticated dogs.
A worthy concept brought low by abrasive style and slapdash organization.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-28397-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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