A bit like stand-up comedy: entertaining, but hardly deep.
Another season with the Kerr clan in sunny Mallorca.
Readers of Snowball Oranges (2002) and Manana Manana (2001)—both established Kerr’s reputation as a humorous travel writer—will remember that Kerr, with his wife and kids, moved from their Scottish farm to the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. Charmed by the weather and the promise of a simple life, the Kerrs bought an orange grove and settled in. Now, we find the family in their third season there, trying to make a go of those oranges. The jokey tone is set by the opening discussion of the death of Mario Lanzarote, a pet canary. Equally representative is the section on mosquitoes, which Kerr fears will carry him off alive. He tries a vinegar dip, prompting his wife, Ellie, to remark that he smells like fish-and-chips. Amid this Mallorcan menagerie, Kerr also sketches vignettes about the sex life of his neighbors and complains about the uninvited guests from Blighty who frequently drop by. The predictable elements of the genre are all in place. There’s a supporting cast of local eccentrics, Maria and Pep always on hand to give friendly advice. There’s low-grade family drama: Teenage son Sandy, who has become a “handsome hunk,” must decide whether to stay in Mallorca or return to Scotland. There are the requisite descriptions of Mallorcan cuisine—though some of the gustatory musings seem farcical, as when the Kerrs partake of a delicious bean stew and make the discovery that beans cause flatulence. And, of course, there’s a lesson learned: If you’re going to undertake a risky endeavor, you should commit yourself fully and hold nothing back. Meanwhile, some of Kerr’s efforts are more cutesy than funny—as when Maria shows off “succulent cuts of meat from her own fig-fed pig (last year’s model, of course).”
A bit like stand-up comedy: entertaining, but hardly deep.Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-59228-618-6
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2005
A brief but sometimes knotty and earnest set of studies best suited for Shakespeare enthusiasts.
A brisk study of 20 of the Bard’s plays, focused on stripping off four centuries of overcooked analysis and tangled reinterpretations.
“I don’t really care what he might have meant, nor should you,” writes Smith (Shakespeare Studies/Oxford Univ.; Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, 2016, etc.) in the introduction to this collection. Noting the “gappy” quality of many of his plays—i.e., the dearth of stage directions, the odd tonal and plot twists—the author strives to fill those gaps not with psychological analyses but rather historical context for the ambiguities. She’s less concerned, for instance, with whether Hamlet represents the first flower of the modern mind and instead keys into how the melancholy Dane and his father share a name, making it a study of “cumulative nostalgia” and our difficulty in escaping our pasts. Falstaff’s repeated appearances in multiple plays speak to Shakespeare’s crowd-pleasing tendencies. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a bawdier and darker exploration of marriage than its teen-friendly interpretations suggest. Smith’s strict-constructionist analyses of the plays can be illuminating: Her understanding of British mores and theater culture in the Elizabethan era explains why Richard III only half-heartedly abandons its charismatic title character, and she is insightful in her discussion of how Twelfth Night labors to return to heterosexual convention after introducing a host of queer tropes. Smith's Shakespeare is eminently fallible, collaborative, and innovative, deliberately warping play structures and then sorting out how much he needs to un-warp them. Yet the book is neither scholarly nor as patiently introductory as works by experts like Stephen Greenblatt. Attempts to goose the language with hipper references—Much Ado About Nothing highlights the “ ‘bros before hoes’ ethic of the military,” and Falstaff is likened to Homer Simpson—mostly fall flat.
A brief but sometimes knotty and earnest set of studies best suited for Shakespeare enthusiasts.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4854-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Startling, at times pretentious in its self-regard, but ultimately breathtaking: The Lost Weekend for the under-25 set.
Frey’s lacerating, intimate debut chronicles his recovery from multiple addictions with adrenal rage and sprawling prose.
After ten years of alcoholism and three years of crack addiction, the 23-year-old author awakens from a blackout aboard a Chicago-bound airplane, “covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood.” While intoxicated, he learns, he had fallen from a fire escape and damaged his teeth and face. His family persuades him to enter a Minnesota clinic, described as “the oldest Residential Drug and Alcohol Facility in the World.” Frey’s enormous alcohol habit, combined with his use of “Cocaine . . . Pills, acid, mushrooms, meth, PCP and glue,” make this a very rough ride, with the DTs quickly setting in: “The bugs crawl onto my skin and they start biting me and I try to kill them.” Frey captures with often discomforting acuity the daily grind and painful reacquaintance with human sensation that occur in long-term detox; for example, he must undergo reconstructive dental surgery without anesthetic, an ordeal rendered in excruciating detail. Very gradually, he confronts the “demons” that compelled him towards epic chemical abuse, although it takes him longer to recognize his own culpability in self-destructive acts. He effectively portrays the volatile yet loyal relationships of people in recovery as he forms bonds with a damaged young woman, an addicted mobster, and an alcoholic judge. Although he rejects the familiar 12-step program of AA, he finds strength in the principles of Taoism and (somewhat to his surprise) in the unflinching support of family, friends, and therapists, who help him avoid a relapse. Our acerbic narrator conveys urgency and youthful spirit with an angry, clinical tone and some initially off-putting prose tics—irregular paragraph breaks, unpunctuated dialogue, scattered capitalization, few commas—that ultimately create striking accruals of verisimilitude and plausible human portraits.
Startling, at times pretentious in its self-regard, but ultimately breathtaking: The Lost Weekend for the under-25 set.Pub Date: April 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50775-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
BOOK TO SCREEN
4 Book Adaptations to Check Out In December
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