A contemplative, ``overeducated'' writer turned small-time farmer tells of his adventures planting and harvesting garlic on a semi-arid plot of land in New Mexico. This fine memoir takes up where Crawford's superb ode to farming, Mayordomo (1988), left off. Crawford divides his narrative according to the seasons: autumn is for planting; winter is for waiting; spring is for hoeing; and summer is for the hectic harvesting of garlic, basil, flowers, and vegetables. In chapters with such cryptic headings as ``Uprightness is All,'' ``Garlic Ghettos,'' ``The Flying Clove,'' and ``Pyrotechnics,'' he delineates different aspects of living on the land, interspersing lucid descriptions of apparently mundane chores with meditations on the mysteries of life. Crawford's prose is always deliciously spare and understated: ``Winds arriving late in the day...the vultures are circling closer and closer to their roost and readying themselves to drop, with darkness itself, into their dead trees at the very last moment of light.'' At times his musings seem a bit precious (``[farming] does not wash me clean of my share of privilege as a citizen of the wealthiest and most consumingly rapacious country in the world, but through this labor I know...what it is to live that life with windows on no other''), and his descriptions of certain aspects of farming—such as his decision to switch from cottonmeal-seed fertilizer to synthetic fertilizer to animal manure—go on and on. It would have been nice, too, if Crawford had included more on the history and culture of garlic. Somewhat self-conscious and static in spots, but, still, an evocative book written in clean, often startlingly beautiful prose. (Illustrations.)
Pub Date: April 22, 1992
ISBN: 0-06-018207-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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