Funny and easygoing, Evans reveals the little-known richness of Argentina.
Intrepid English travel writer Evans (Kiwis Might Fly, 2007, etc.) experiences Argentina’s stunningly varied expanses while indulging her girlhood desire to ride horses.
From the high desert of the northwest to the northeast falls of Iguazú to hyperenergetic Buenos Aires to Patagonia and the “end of the world,” Evans roughed it during two months of solitary travel in this vast country. As a pleasant leitmotif, she cleverly incorporates her youthful desire to learn to ride in a land where horses have played a vital role since the Spanish founder of Buenos Aires, Pedro de Mendoza, abandoned a handful of his steeds to run wild and breed on the pampas in the mid-16th century. Evans journeyed from mid-October to mid-December, during the spring in Argentina. She started with a week’s stay at a breathtaking 6,000-acre cattle estancia in Córdoba owned by an Anglo-Argentine family that arrived in the 1820s as part of a British immigration wave. She rode about the hills, drove through the Puna (the desert shared with Chile and Bolivia) and visited the Salinas Grandes. In breezy, lighthearted prose, she imparts a smattering of Argentine history. Che Guevara grew up near Córdoba, for example, and the economic collapse of 2001 left 15 million Argentines in poverty. Evans traces the conquistadors’ inroads and their decimation of the various native tribes, and relates briefly the movement by criollos (South American-born Spaniards) for independence from Spain in 1816. Darwin arrived in Argentina in 1833, and Evans frequently quotes from his observations. Evita Perón and the return of her corpse warrant a digression, as does the “dirty war” of the 1970s and ’80s that resulted in 30,000 “disappeared.” Along her amiable way, Evans encounters tango and gauchos; she even learns to castrate a calf.
Funny and easygoing, Evans reveals the little-known richness of Argentina.Pub Date: May 6, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-34110-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Delta
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2008
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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