As the Soviet Union collapses, young Briton MacLean accompanies his German Aunt Zita on a rueful trip through Mitteleuropa. The journey is funny, helpless, hopeless, and, finally, haunting. Two generations after Isherwood, MacLean leaves Germany in a battered Trabant with his widowed aunt and a pet pig named Winston (the Orwellian connection is apt). The Old Lady, the Young Journalist, and the Porcine Muse journey from the Rhineland through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania to this chronicle's heart of this darkness—the Kremlin and the tomb of Lenin. It all reads like a gazetteer of Central Europe, with place names in which vowels are optional. There are swift changes of scene, and one character rapidly replaces another. Germans and Russians, Magyars and Slavs, folk named Panni, Pappi, and Dinu entertain Aunt Zita, nephew Rory, and swine Winston. Over halpaprik†s and apricot schnapps, individual tales of war, hot and cold, are recounted, including personal histories of the Hungarian Revolution, the Prague Spring, and the end of the cold war. There's a particularly moving account of what happened at Auschwitz, and one person observes that ``It's been going downhill here since the Middle Ages.'' The writing is occasionally too easily excited (``an ancient man in a trilby with a long white beard'') or fruity (``the air of his saxophone drifted on the puszta as sleep overcame us''), and no xenophobic skinheads or neo-Nazis show up. But the observations are sharp, the humor is black, and the Weltschmerz goes back to Vlad the Impaler. It's not always easy, traveling with this Occidental tourist through the Eastern bloc, but, ultimately, the trip is a memorable souvenir of postwar Europe.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-316-54239-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
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
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.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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