bookshelf

ON RUE TATIN

Name: ON RUE TATIN
Author: Susan Herrmann Loomis
ISBN: 0-7679-0454-0

LIVING AND COOKING IN A FRENCH TOWN

by Susan Herrmann Loomis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2001

Before readers get to the recipes at the end of each chapter, they may well have lost their appetites.

bookshelf

Another tablespoon of saccharine for the gone-to-France-and-bought-a-darling-wreck-of-a-house genre, this time with recipes, from food-writer Loomis.

Everything is just too wonderful for Loomis when she moves to France with her husband, Michael, and young son, Joe, to write a cookbook about French farmhouse cooking. Her first week there and a couple of friends offer to pony up the francs for them to buy a 300-year-old maison bourgeoise in the Norman town of Louviers. Thus Loomis can play at la vie bohemien while the bills are underwritten. Bully for her, but, if it is too much to characterize her writing as smug, it positively—or negatively—radiates self-satisfaction: “I put a candle on the table, set it with cloth napkins and we sat down to eat. The stove was blazing and we were incredibly warm and cozy. We ate slowly and told stories to Joe.” She trips over the sheer fabulousness of it all: “The morning was delicious,” “We settled into a lovely routine,” “Louviers is magic in the mornings”—and in the afternoons and the evenings. The butcher, the fishmonger, the baker, the pastry cook—each and every one is brilliant and delightfully eccentric. They find rare bottles in the ancient cellar of their house (“These bottles will put Joe through college”), they find the right house paint (“ ‘Now more ochre,’ Michael said and I agreed”), and they seem to find a fruity bonbon and a spray of sunshine at every turn. She has a minor fracas with a local priest (far and away the best, most leathery part of the book), but otherwise it’s plain cloying from the get-go: “I try to run my hands through the scrubby thyme plants that grow in our front courtyard daily, too, for thyme loves company.”

Before readers get to the recipes at the end of each chapter, they may well have lost their appetites.

Pub Date: April 10, 2001

ISBN: 0-7679-0454-0

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Broadway

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

bookshelf

NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

bookshelf

TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

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

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

bookshelf

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.