A highly readable family story that brims with heart and optimism.
A debut multigenerational memoir focuses on the strong women in the author’s family tree.
In this book, Stradling mingles the standout stories from her own genealogical past with the spiritual lessons exemplified by those tales. Her narrative spans five generations of her family's history, and she delves deeply into as many of the particulars as she can uncover from each era. She tells the stories of her great-grandmother Mackie, her grandmother Minnie, and her mother, Gail, generously mixed with echoes and reflections on her own contemporary life. Readers will likely be struck immediately by her decision to employ a number of novelistic devices, such as dramatic pacing, crosscutting between narrative strands, and reconstituted dialogue. She uses all of these techniques with a very skilled and pleasingly light hand—the result is the kind of reconstructed family history every author strives for but rarely achieves. Readers follow these women as they deal with the heartbreak of losing loved ones, a kind of tragedy that strikes Mackie often and quite dramatically, which helps to make her the book’s most memorable character. “People were instinctively drawn to her,” readers are told. “She was charismatic and empathic.” Stradling also chronicles the challenges of these women’s daily lives and careers, particularly in the case of Minnie, who earned her master’s degree from the University of Washington in 1936, became a Shakespeare scholar, and had a strong effect on the education world of her day. The author has deeply researched her subjects and steeps her account in letter and diary extracts, all assembled and studied with obvious care. Small recurring details—Gail’s love of the written word, for instance, or the comfort Mackie drew from the teachings of Christian Science—are thus brought wonderfully to life. And the work’s underlying spiritual message—“Faith and prayer are more than a few words”—is rendered all the more clearly for not being stridently presented.
A highly readable family story that brims with heart and optimism.Pub Date: April 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62747-037-7
Page Count: 186
Publisher: Dharma Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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