by Nicholas Delbanco ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 22, 1989
A disappointing attempt to wrest significance from a lifetime of visits to Provence; by a veteran novelist (Sherbrookes, Stillness, etc.). Delbanco begins promisingly in the caves of the Dordogne, as his tendency to heavily underscore ironies is balanced by a rare modesty of style. But in the episodes that follow—Delbanco at 18, setting forth with a letter of credit and a sports car to deliver; the author as an adult, picking up a Volvo sedan and driving down from Sweden, as a young writer living with his London relatives, then delivering an Alfa Romeo with a folksinger girlfriend—it becomes clear that these are vignettes, too frail for the burdens they carry. Partially, the problem is Delbanco's overripe style. Even when he deprecates his youthful smugness, born of privilege, he somehow ends up celebrating it. A paragraph of delicate description is followed by one full of unleavened facts ("These are the thirty-two winds of Provence. . ."). Sentimental dialogues with his daughters alternate with the kind of lush language and Victorian cadences indulged in by some art historians. The episodic technique prevents our ever getting to know the main characters, aristocratic Lilo and Alex, and the peasants Guillaume and Felicity. Briefly, the book threatens to make a centerpiece of Delbanco's proximity to and friendship with James Baldwin. But their encounters are short and circumspect, adding nothing to what is known of the late, self-exiled writer. In the end, a frustrating book, good only in fragments. Delbanco often notes that Provence is a harsh land; a little of that harshness in his narrative would have done much to help this memoir keep its balance.
Pub Date: July 22, 1989
ISBN: 0802138098
Page Count: 243
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1989
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
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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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
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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