Fantastically successful travel propaganda.
An achingly seductive love letter to Brazil’s most famous city.
The fifth entry in Bloomsbury’s The Writer and the City series paints a portrait of a land where the sun always shines and the contented inhabitants never lose their cool. Tracing Rio’s evolution from its origins as the home of the Guanabara Indians through its current-day incarnation as the world’s biggest party town, Brazilian journalist Castro walks the reader through the cultural and historical high points of the place he’s very pleased to call home. Beginning with Vespucci’s arrival at Rio’s shores in 1502, the author runs through the successive waves of colonizers and immigrants who, having found Rio, couldn’t bear to leave it. The French and the Portuguese, the pirates of every nationality, the slaves who were brought in to work Brazil’s plantations but at least had the fortune to remain in the city—Castro traces their influence on Rio’s culture and particularly on Carnival, that enormous industry that supports countless bead manufacturers and ostrich-feather merchants. The author expounds on the festival’s roots, its heroes, its profound impact on the philosophy of Rio’s inhabitants, and the strange rise of the perfume atomizer as a mid-century drug of choice at Carnival time. He also explores Rio’s rich musical tradition, with special focus on “The Girl from Ipanema,” as well as Ipanema itself and the women who inspired the song. The female is celebrated throughout Castro’s work, in fact, and in keeping with the theme of Rio’s serious appreciation of frivolity, he attributes women’s liberation in Brazil to the adoption of French fashion in the 1800s: staying à la mode required the ladies to leave their male-run households in order to visit the modistes. Castro makes only the briefest mention of the city’s dire poverty and organized crime; his is a glorious fantasy of his ideal hometown.
Fantastically successful travel propaganda.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7475-7331-X
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004
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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