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A LIKELY STORY

ONE SUMMER WITH LILLIAN HELLMAN

Bitter humor and painful honesty permeate this look back in anger 20 years to a summer spent by Mahoney (Whoredom in Kimmage: Irish Women Coming of Age, 1993, etc.) as domestic aide to Lillian Hellman, pictured here as conniving, hypocritical, abusive, and querulous in coping with age. Troubled by her father’s early death and her mother’s alcoholism, and insecure at boarding school, 17-year-old Mahoney began working as Hellman’s part-time live-in housekeeper-cook in her Martha’s Vineyard home, after the playwright replied positively to a fan letter/employment inquiry. However, Mahoney swiftly lost all illusions of receiving wisdom from a literary lion and surrogate mother as Hellman turned out to be more menace than mentor. While evoking compassion for Hellman’s struggles with blindness and physical frailty and candidly admitting her own inadequacies in the job, Mahoney more often catches her old boss in a glaring, pitiless light. Here, Hellman haggles with Mahoney over pay and time, scolds her for trivial or imagined mistakes, and speaks condescendingly of her large Irish-American family; she tries to impress guests James Taylor and Carly Simon by saying she smokes pot; and she gossips about or quarrels with friends Joe Alsop, Leonard Bernstein, and William and Rose Styron. Most shocking, Hellman, so publicly sympathetic to minority groups and labor, is depicted here as privately venting racial slurs and treating employees like indentured servants. A couple of times, Mahoney unexpectedly discovers Hellman naked’symbolic of how unadorned the author of An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, and Scoundrel Time appears here without her own self-aggrandizing recollections. By devoting more space than necessary to her own family’s struggles, Mahoney lets her difficult but compelling antagonist shift out of focus at times. But even at these points, her graceful prose and pungent dialogue overcome this narrative ungainliness. In some ways, an unusually sharp magazine piece padded out to book length—but, nevertheless, a stylish memoir that recalls a legendary crusader caught with her armor down. (First serial to Vanity Fair and Elle)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-385-47793-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998

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NUTCRACKER

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

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

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

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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