As unpretentious as a tapas bar, and as brimming with savory morsels.
In a highly likable debut, former British journalist Evans tours Spain on her bicycle.
It’s a very straightforward affair: the author pedals her way through the Pyrenees, then hops a plane south to explore the area between Grenada and Jerez before jumping north once more to take in the wonderful Extremadura. First and foremost, she explains the tapas: “The Spanish like to drink for hours on end . . . but they don’t like to get drunk. And so they snack.” Little rounds of bread and bacalao, eggs with mayonnaise, squares of potato omelet, pickled herring, marinated eel, a small slice of tripe, all find their way down the author’s gullet, and she describes them with such relish it feels as if we’re eating along with her. Meanwhile, equally vivid are her encounters with living creatures (dogs, hogs, unpleasant hostel keepers). Evans only glancingly delineates the landscapes she passes through, though she makes up for that with long rambles through the countryside’s history—and Spain is nothing if not full of outrageous history. The writer has a fine time with Juana the Mad, so fiercely possessive of her husband that she refused to have him buried and instead “embarked on a tour of Spain with Felipe’s fast-rotting corpse.” She also does well with Wilfred the Hairy of Catalonia, the unfortunate fate of the Duchess of Alba’s feet, the little cider mill that acted as a safe house for downed pilots during WWII, and the plague of witches that visited Zugarramurdi in the 13th century. She gets bonked, a cycling term for the discombobulation that ensues from spending more calories in a day than you put in the body, and she suffers faulty directions from all sorts of deceptive and cruel experts. The trip ends in the Extremadura countryside, with Evans cycling by “the occasional aged farmer with his donkey tilling the land and, every now and then, a posse of black-haired pigs.”
As unpretentious as a tapas bar, and as brimming with savory morsels.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-553-81556-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bantam UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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