Spiritual solace remains elemental, Mahoney finds, the urge for direct personal experience with the divine. She conveys a...
An affecting visit to the ancient, humbling act of pilgrimage.
Having witnessed pilgrims from afar, NBCC Award finalist Mahoney (A Likely Story, 1998, etc.) had sensed the spiritual weight of their deed. She was awed by their faith, these vulnerable souls confronting the natural fears of uncertainty and obscurity, and felt a twinge of envy, an envy fueled by her own flirtations with belief. So she took to the pilgrim's road—six of them, in fact: Walsingham, Lourdes, El Camino de Santiago, Varanasi, the Holy Land, and St. Patrick's Purgatory (she notes there is a shrine to a dead outlaw where drug dealers pay homage, but she gives that one a miss)—to see if the journeys’ difficulties might be redemptive and renewing for her. With each pilgrimage, Mahoney gains in appreciation for the process; each had its own cosmos, beginning with Walsingham, a rough start where Paisleyites hurled curses at vicars venerating the Virgin. On the long walk to Santiago, she gets a first taste of the worldly experience a pilgrimage offers, where once there were “bandits and charlatans, kooks and cheats, festivals, toll bridges, romances, sideshows.” At Varanasi, things turn more sublime—“so many people standing half naked in the river accentuated both the frailty and the grace of the human body. Their devotion refined, soft, slightly wry”—while by the Sea of Galilee she discerns the compelling nature of Jesus, his “generosity and charity, the effort to see God and bring forth the highest virtue in man.” Her “little stump of reverence for the Catholic Church” is in evidence, so too her skepticism, as well as her conviction that faith requires a leap, may indeed live in that leap. Doubt, too, and risk and daring; reason could ignite faith, but trust sustained it.
Spiritual solace remains elemental, Mahoney finds, the urge for direct personal experience with the divine. She conveys a genuine sense of spiritual mindfulness on the road and there is no denying these pilgrimages paid her back in full.Pub Date: March 27, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-92262-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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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