A competent travelogue, but not much more.
A middling memoir of travels among the world’s far-flung islands.
Clarke (California Fault, 1996, etc.) takes us on a wide-ranging tour of islands that are off most tour-group maps. Some of them (such as the Bay of Fundy’s Campobello Island, where Franklin Roosevelt kept a summer home) are notable for their role in history, while others (such as the embattled and rapidly disappearing coral atolls of the Maldives) are notable for what they reveal about the fragility of islands as ecosystems. But most, it appears, figure in Clarke’s narrative simply because he happened to go there at some time or another, and his descriptions of what he calls “the last real islands” are often little more revealing than those found in standard-issue travel brochures. His pieces follow a standard formula: he travels to a distant island, takes a quick survey of its appearance and flaws, and then finds some offbeat character or another on whom to hang an anecdote or two. For instance, on Chile’s Isla Robinson Crusoe, “a strangely claustrophobic place” where the Scottish sailor (and, by all accounts, nasty punk) Alexander Selkirk was marooned between 1704 and 1709, Clarke homes in on a French curmudgeon who’d spent time in a Viet Minh military prison in the 1950s and now spends his days fishing in solitude, while on Vietnam’ s Phu Quoc island (a wartime vacation spot for Viet Cong and American fighters alike) he hooks up with a fearlessly contemptuous Amerasian anticommunist who “was careful to speak Vietnamese, but he dreamed in English.” Though Clarke is capable of inspired writing—his brief passage on the eerie silences of Jura is superb—he seems a little bored with the whole business of island-hopping, and his account compares poorly to Bill Holm’s Eccentric Islands (p. 1097), which covers some of the same ground with more vigor.
A competent travelogue, but not much more.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-345-41143-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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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