Only two flaws mar Smith’s delicate comedy: The 50-page “Father Christmas” lacks the shorter adventures’ light touch, and we...
Prof. Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld’s second volume of adventures is bookended by a pair of memorable lectures and a pair of his own obituaries.
“I am always interested in everything,” the mainstay of the Institute for Romance Philology tells his host at the University of Arkansas. All five of these interlinked episodes explore the folly of this singularly imperceptive remark. In the title story, von Igelfeld, prodded by jealousy of his colleagues, seeks an invitation to America only to discover that his host, Prof. R.B. Leflar, thinks he’s a professor of veterinary medicine—a professor, in fact, quite recently deceased—and expects him to give a paper on dachshunds. In “A Leg to Stand On,” Prof. Leflar returns the visit to von Igelfeld in Regensburg, where a sausage dog again plays an unexpectedly prominent role. “On the Couch” sends von Igelfeld first to the same psychiatrist his vengeful colleague Prof. Dr. Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer is consulting, and then, when von Igelfeld outdoes Unterholzer in vindictiveness, to a priestly confessional that’s the comic high point of the volume. “The Bones of Father Christmas,” by far the longest of these stories, unleashes Smith’s wildest inventions, as von Igelfeld is inveigled into taking charge of the sacred relics of St. Nicholas and gets a private audience with the Pope, who otherwise passes his time playing solitaire. Finally, “The Perfect Imperfect” packs him aboard a cruise ship as the only unmarried man bobbing in a sea of hundreds of rapacious widows before he takes matters into his own hands.
Only two flaws mar Smith’s delicate comedy: The 50-page “Father Christmas” lacks the shorter adventures’ light touch, and we never do get to hear the complete text of either of von Igelfeld’s crucial lectures. (Illus. throughout with b&w block prints)Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-9508-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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