Witty and disarming.
Having conquered the English Channel in their narrowboat (Narrow Dog to Carcassonne, 2008), the plucky septuagenarian Terry Darlington, his long-suffering wife Monica and their whippet Jim sail the southern portion of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.
The author narrates in a tumbling patchwork of memories, anecdotes, snatches of poetry and minimally punctuated dialogue. The alien spectacle of their narrowboat—60 feet long and less than seven feet wide—drew crowds of onlookers everywhere they stopped, from the Chesapeake Bay to the charming port of Savannah, Ga. Accompanying the pair was Jim, the narrow dog of the title, who valiantly endured what must have been an uncomfortable nine months—and 1,150 miles—spent aboard the Phyllis May. Both dog and owner share a flair for melodrama, and Darlington’s woe-is-me absurdity maintains a reliable comic effect. He is sarcastic and romantic in equal measure, and sharp enough to draw humor from every port of call. For the reader, the joys of their journey are not found in marvels of nature or maritime details—though there are plenty—but in the pair’s irreverent reactions to their seemingly endless hurdles and triumphs. The actual time the Darlingtons spent sailing was minimal; most of their adventures involved being stranded in one seaside town after another, awaiting boat repairs, medical attention or better weather before chugging along. Considering the prodigious outpouring of support and hospitality they encountered on the trip, Darlington can be a bit harsh on the quirky Southern communities they visited—though his chief complaint, besides the state of American lager (fair enough), seemed to be that Jim was not allowed in the bars. One wonders what watery passage they will be tempted to navigate next.
Witty and disarming.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-34209-4
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Delta
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
Bryson is a real traveler, the kind of guy who can be entertained by (and be entertaining about) a featureless landscape...
Just in time for Sydney’s upcoming Olympic games, this travel narrative from veteran wanderer Bryson (I’m a Stranger Here Myself, 1999, etc.) provides an appreciative, informative, and hilarious portrait of the land Down Under.
“And so once more to the wandering road,” declares Bryson—which is music to the ears of his many deserving fans. This time it is Australia, a country tailor-made to surrender just the kind of amusing facts Bryson loves. It was here, after all, that the Prime Minister dove into the surf of Victoria one day and simply disappeared—the prime minister, mind you. There are more things here to kill you than anywhere else in the world: all of the ten most poisonous snakes, sharks and crocodiles in abundance, the paralytic tick, and venomous seashells that will “not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you.” A place harsh and hostile to life, “staggeringly empty yet packed with stuff. Interesting stuff, ancient stuff, stuff not readily explained.” And Bryson finds it everywhere: in the Aborigines (who evidently invented and mastered oceangoing craft 30,000 years before anyone else, then promptly forgot all about the sea), in the Outback (“where men are men and sheep are nervous”), in stories from the days of early European exploration (of such horrific proportions they can be appreciated only as farce), and in the numerous rural pubs (where Bryson learns the true meaning of a hangover). Bryson is still open to wonder at the end of his pilgrimage: the grand and noble Uluru (once known as Ayer’s Rock) reaches right down into his primordial memory and gives it a stir. “I’m just observing that if I were looking for an ancient starship this is where I would start digging. That’s all I'm saying.”
Bryson is a real traveler, the kind of guy who can be entertained by (and be entertaining about) a featureless landscape scattered with “rocks the color of bad teeth.” Fortunately for him and for us, there’s a lot more to Australia than that.Pub Date: June 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-7679-0385-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
Essential for fans and the definitive celebration of a show that made history by knowing the rules and breaking every one of...
Everything you ever wanted to know about America’s favorite Mafia serial—and then some.
New York magazine TV critic Seitz (Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion, 2015, etc.) and Rolling Stone TV critic Sepinwall (Breaking Bad 101: The Complete Critical Companion, 2017, etc.) gather a decade’s worth of their smart, lively writing about New Jersey’s most infamous crime family. As they note, The Sopranos was first shot in 1997, helmed by master storyteller David Chase, of Northern Exposure and Rockford Files renown, who unveiled his creation at an odd time in which Robert De Niro had just appeared in a film about a Mafioso in therapy. The pilot was “a hybrid slapstick comedy, domestic sitcom, and crime thriller, with dabs of ’70s American New Wave grit. It is high and low art, vulgar and sophisticated.” It barely hinted at what was to come, a classic of darkness and cynicism starring James Gandolfini, an actor “obscure enough that, coupled with the titanic force of his performance, it was easy to view him as always having been Tony Soprano.” Put Gandolfini together with one of the best ensembles and writing crews ever assembled, and it’s small wonder that the show is still remembered, discussed, and considered a classic. Seitz and Sepinwall occasionally go too Freudian (“Tony is a human turd, shat out by a mother who treats her son like shit”), though sometimes to apposite effect: Readers aren’t likely to look at an egg the same way ever again. The authors’ interviews with Chase are endlessly illuminating, though we still won’t ever know what really happened to the Soprano family on that fateful evening in 2007. “It’s not something you just watch,” they write. “It’s something you grapple with, accept, resist, accept again, resist again, then resolve to live with”—which, they add, is “absolutely in character for this show.”
Essential for fans and the definitive celebration of a show that made history by knowing the rules and breaking every one of them.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3494-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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