Osler’s plea is not so gentle; rather, it’s opinionated (though never dismissive), bell-clear, wickedly humorous, brilliant—a call for cultivated anarchy in the garden that turns an oxymoron into a sensuous, sensible act. “Why garden? God knows . . . Damn those fine mornings. It’s then that guilt seeps in like bad gas,” groans Osler, one of England’s best-known gardeners. Don’t buy it for a minute. Her love of gardening is obvious, even if “a great number of gardening jobs are pure slog.” And her garden, eclectically wanton as it is, enemy of everything regimented and overly neat, shot through with the native vitality of plants for atmosphere and mystery, brings her to her knees much of the time; untidiness requires work. She wouldn’t have it any other way. She likes a rude edge, to blur and enchant, the unruly “quality that adds an extra sensory dimension.” She loves hedges, walls, and paths—“the bones of a garden”—as long as they don’t rob the garden of its sensuality. Here she offers not so much advice as the experience of her Shropshire garden: trees for their summer crowns and bare winter branches, stone for its texture and floral affinities, water for its attractiveness to humans and kingfishers and newts, bulbs for their individuality and scope. She’s not tethered to flowers, but she loves them too (“who can go outside and kick a lily?”). Like her garden, Osler will not be confined, and she delights in moving off in many directions, to weather wars and the transporting quality of scent, botanical illustrations and the patron saints of gardening (Osler suggests a small figure of one in the garden “might be just as efficacious as a blast of Phostrogen”). Osler’s thinking is original, intuitive, and sharp as a tack; as a gardening writer she rightly sits up there with Henry Mitchell and Eleanor Perenyi.
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-55970-439-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
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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