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44

Name: 44
Author: Peter Sheridan
ISBN: 0-670-88514-2

DUBLIN MADE ME

by Peter Sheridan ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1999

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A funny, tender, and vividly rendered memoir of the author’s boyhood in 1960s Dublin. Irish theater director Sheridan spent his youth in a house teeming with siblings and miscellaneous lodgers. Like Angela’s Ashes, this is a memoir about a family’s muddling through, of a boy’s learning to laugh in order to keep from crying. Though less squalid than McCourt’s Limerick, Sheridan’s Dublin is a quirky, colorful place. His dad is a hilariously indefatigable Mr. Fix-it, vanquished repeatedly by a malfunctioning TV set and a diabolically possessed washing machine. Never have the frustrations of home repair been so delightfully chronicled. Here’s Sheridan on the family’s maniacal washing machine: “Every time [ma] turned it on, it leaked. When one source was plugged, it found somewhere else to leak from. . .We were living permanently in Wellington boots. If things continued, a raft was next.” As in most Irish memoirs about childhood, Sheridan’s school is a repressive prison run by bullying, sometimes pedophile priests. Sheridan and his friend Andy form a bad garage band, listen to Beatles records, and smoke pot. Andy’s older sister becomes the object of Sheridan’s painful first love, the target of his hopelessly ineffective romantic advances. Sheridan sneaks into a Swedish movie about birth and the female anatomy. Mouth agape, he emerges from the theater a wiser man: “Now life was awash with new concepts . . . with uterus, cervix, and placenta, words that sounded like planets from the outer reaches of the solar system.” Tragedy arrives when the author’s younger brother dies after brain surgery. Looking at his devastated parents, Sheridan has an epiphany: “Maybe that’s all there was—procreation and death. You live on in your children, but you die.” At 17, Sheridan finds the love of his life: the theater. Acting becomes his way of understanding himself and the world around him. A thoroughly enjoyable, comic journey back in time; Sheridan has brilliantly re-created his delightful, poignant boyhood. (Author tour)

Pub Date: May 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-670-88514-2

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
EVERY INCH OF HER
by Peter Sheridan

- BOOK REVIEW
47 ROSES
by Peter Sheridan

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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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.