A quiet, detailed, but sometimes unsatisfying, memoir of an isolated girlhood. Poet Green (The Squanicook Eclogues, not reviewed) painstakingly describes a childhood fraught with deprivation. Depicting her life through the sixth grade on a Massachusetts farm in the 1960s, she lists many traumas: her mother's cancer, her parents' alcoholism and lack of love for each other, her feelings of being caught in a tug-of-war between her mother and paternal grandmother. Green ``depended on language to save [her],'' she states, but her use of words is not so much insightful as it is descriptive. She conveys the somber mood of the farm, the drudgery of chores, and the wonders of nature with a poet's eye: ``I could see the sun on the tops of the maples, the wind lifting the ruffled skirts of forsythia, swallows returning again and again to their nests, woven from the remnants of autumn.'' In the text's most interesting sections, Green weaves an account of her great- grandparents' 19th-century Boston courtship into her own story; the reader becomes almost more intrigued by her recreation of her family's history than by the description of her own. Green's examination of her emotional life lacks the clarity with which she evokes her physical surroundings. She tells of her relationship to her grandmother—whose ``pet'' she was—but not until the book's second half does she reveal that the woman was obsessed with her and sexually abused her. Green is equally guarded about her own suicidal tendencies; the book is almost over before she states, ``I'd been cutting myself for a long time.'' Haunting, evocative prose that leaves readers wanting to know more.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-393-03650-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
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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