A seminal sadness pervades this engaging travelogue: when the author departs, it’s as if he’s bidding farewell to a lover he...
Veteran travel-writer Lewis (An Empire of the East, 1994, etc.) returns to Sicily in 1998 to see old friends, visit familiar sites, and allow his keen vision and ample imagination the opportunity to roam.
Dedicated to a Sicilian journalist killed by a Mafia bomb, the text rarely lets us forget the presence of organized crime. The word Mafia appears on the final page and many others(a dark motif in otherwise luminous music. The author’s personal fascination with the island may have begun, he comments, when he married the daughter of a Sicilian. Lewis first visited the island during WWII, when he explored the area around Mt. Etna. (He notes with typical irony that living near the volcano’s crater was a physician who specialized in nervous disorders.) He returned as a journalist in the 1950s, then again in 1990 to cover a Mafia trial. Although Mafiosi lurk everywhere, the author hastens to declare that Sicily is not an island of evil: “Sicilian human society,” he writes, “for all one’s presuppositions, displays cooperation, tolerance and good nature.” After about 40 pages, Lewis arrives in the recent past (1998) and takes us on a satisfying tour of the unusual and out-of-the-way. He has a sharp eye for oddities, recalling, for instance, a restaurateur with two thumbs on the right hand who had once served him. We learn which side streets and parks in Palermo are favored by lovers; we visit a remote inn that reminds Lewis of the Middle Ages; we stop in Corleone (made famous by The Godfather films); we hear about the spate of immigrants from Africa (the island now has its own “boat people”); and we read about the vandals who have recently damaged some of the island’s treasures.
A seminal sadness pervades this engaging travelogue: when the author departs, it’s as if he’s bidding farewell to a lover he fears he will never see again.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-29048-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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