Like many of the places McCamish visits, this promises romance that is rarely delivered.
A rambling love letter to ports, shipping, and all manner of seafaring myth and romance.
Inspired by a magical night in Massawa, Eritrea, in 1997, Australian writer McCamish decides to “plan a trip into the past” by exploring ports around the world. It's not so easy to bum around the ocean these days, but determination and the services of a travel agent who specializes in cargo travel land our hero on the Anneke Schliemann, a “Luxembourg flagged container ship on route to the Levant.” It makes assorted stops, including Athens, Beirut, and Lattakia, Syria, but the lion's share of McCamish's observations are reserved for his relations with the crew and his one fellow passenger. After docking in Calabria, the author then flies to the Canary Islands, where he boards another cargo vessel, the Van Riebeeck, this one traveling to southern Africa. Again, McCamish is assiduous in describing shipboard life; he details the crew's bar with its bachelor-pad decor, the engine room with its 53,000-horsepower engine, and the odd relationships he strikes up with sailors who spend most of their lives on this floating warehouse. Then, in Mauritius, he boards the Anna Bohme, a container carrier bound for India, and a similar round of observations begins yet again. Ultimately, ports play a small role in the work, as the author ends up spending almost all of his time on board the ships and thus has difficulty getting to know those seaside towns that defy discovery for the brief moments ashore. He does, however, have an extensive pool of travel-writers he is fond of quoting and lards his tale with the words of Twain, Hemingway, Conrad, Kerouac, and numerous others.
Like many of the places McCamish visits, this promises romance that is rarely delivered.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-86450-346-7
Page Count: 268
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2002
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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