Category: Reviews

It’s always a challenge to describe an artist’s work, whether in painting, music, or poetry. Sebastian Smee is well-recognized for doing this successfully as an art critic. He has been with The Boston Globe since 2008 and in 2011 won the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism.

In this book he has devised an original way of looking at eight well-known artists. He pairs them off by country and date, and looks at the effects of both their friendships and rivalries on their work. In the chapter on Manet and Degas he describes the close friendship that developed between the warm, outgoing Manet and the reserved bachelor, Degas. This came to a head in 1868, when Degas had painted a portrait of Manet and his wife Suzanne. Not long after this Degas paid a visit to Manet’s studio and saw that someone had taken a knife to the portrait, which had gone right through Suzanne’s face. The culprit turned out to be Manet himself. Smee says no one has ever discovered an explanation of this. Degas took down the still life Manet had given him and returned it to him.

This friendship apparently recovered. There are interesting chapters as well on the pairs: Freud and Bacon of the UK; Matisse and Picasso in France; and Pollock and De Kooning in the U.S. The book has good illustrations to accompany a very interesting text.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

Buy Now!

In this week’s news in Ottawa there is the story of an Islamic extremist pleading guilty to orchestrating the destruction of 14 of Timbuktu’s mausoleums because they considered them totems of idolatry. The structures housed the tombs of the city’s great thinkers and were on the World Heritage list.

The story is very similar to a book just published called The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu. Here we find the story of Timbuktu from early days, in the 12th century, when it had been a big trading centre in Africa. In its Golden Age, many Islamic scholars built an important book trade and Timbuktu was the incubator for the richness of Islam. In this book, which brings the story up 2013,  fifteen Al Qaeda fighters attacked the government library that housed thousands of precious manuscripts by Timbuktu’s greatest savants and scientists, preserved for centuries, and burnt them. A curator who had led the way in building up the collection, built a team of volunteers and in an incredible act of devotion managed to transport the manuscripts by river and road, past hostile jihadi guards, bandits, and attack helicopters, and saved almost all of Timbuktu’s 377,000 manuscripts.

The author, Joshua Hammer, has been a bureau chief for Newsweek and correspondent-at-large on five continents. He knows the countries he is writing about. He has also written three other non-fiction books. This one helps us to understand what the Islamic State is trying to do.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

Buy Now!

Robert Moor is an American, who happens to live in Half Moon Bay, British Columbia, and is well-known for his writing on the environment.

In this book he looks at trails, in all shapes and sizes, from the earliest fossil trails to the great Appalachian Trail running from Georgia to Maine. Moor has walked many of these trails himself. He looks at the beginning of animal life and what made it first move –  from tiny ant trails to massive elephant migrations. And then human beings — why they chose certain paths and not others.

There are a number of interviews with famous scientists and environmentalists. They show how pathways for humans act as an essential guiding force on the planet. Like many others, the Appalachian Trail goes hundreds of years back to the days of the Cherokee Indians and Moor gives excellent descriptions of their development. One branch grew when the trail continued north through eastern Canada all the way up to Newfoundland.  It eventually hopped the Atlantic Ocean and took root in Europe.

Moor shows how without trails, mankind would be lost and this runs all the way from the origins of our road networks up to today’s internet. He has written for many American publications and also won the Middlebury Fellowship in Environmental Journalism.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

Buy Now!

The Taming of the Shrew has always been one of Shakespeare’s most controversial plays. In Vinegar Girl, the best-selling novelist Anne Tyler tackles the same subject and gives her own version of the famous story.

She describes the life of a modern, working girl, Kate Battista, who is stuck at home looking after her old father, a retired scientist, and her younger, spoiled  sister. The father has been working for years and is on the verge of a breakthrough in his research, a project that could help millions. The problem is that his young lab assistant has reached the end of his stay in Canada and is about to be deported to his home country, Russia.

Dr. Battista has an outrageous idea that would enable his assistant to stay in Canada. Needless to say it involves the strong-minded Kate. This book tells how everyone becomes slowly accustomed to the idea of a wedding. By the end, the vinegar girl has become quite tamed – not unlike the shrew before her.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

It is the spring of 1941 and although the British raids over Germany had intensified, there was general concern that the British were losing the war.

Some of the aircraft were badly damaged on the way home and came down in the Occupied Zone of France. Here they were hidden by small groups of French men and women who helped the pilots get home to England, where they were badly needed to fly again. This was the beginning of what came to be known as the French Resistance and this new book by the renowned spy novelist, Alan Furst, gives a thrilling account of what this Resistance was able to do.

The hero goes by the name of Mathieu. He works out of Paris which is occupied by the Nazis, and heavily shuttered by night with the streetlamps painted blue and windows shuttered in a heavy blackout. Mathieu and his network also work from neighbouring farmhouses, barns and churches.

The story is thrilling and the relationships very real and touching, heightened by the constant fear of discovery. A Hero of France joins the list of Alan Furst’s legendary thrillers, many of which, such as Midnight in Europe and Mission to Paris, were bestsellers. Furst was born in New York, lived for many years in Paris and now lives on Long Island.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

This is a book on Vincent Van Gogh, with a new look at the troubled artist.

Bernadette Murphy is an English writer who went to live with an older brother in Provence, France, thirty years ago. She had already researched her own family tree and while in France became interested in the story of Vincent Van Gogh. She gets to know the ancient city of Arles where he lived from February, 1888 to May, 1889.

Van Gogh was born in Holland, in 1853, to the Reverend Theodorus Van Gogh and his wife Anna Cornelia, one of seven children. As a youngster his contemporaries describe him as peevish, intense, and quick to anger. The mental problems continued, and were not treated in those days. He tried church work, following his father, and had great care and kindness toward those in difficulty, something he kept all his life. He was not accepted by the church, however, and started painting, encouraged by his brother Theo who was an art dealer and devoted to his brother all his life, as we know from his letters.

Vincent moved to Arles and set himself up in what would become famous as The Yellow House, and set out to paint full time. At one point the painter Paul Gauguin came to live with him. He was lonely, however, and one day in deep distress, cut off his ear and gave it to a prostitute who lived in a nearby brothel. Murphy does a thorough job of investigating this whole incident, from reports by the police officer to documents from Gauguin, Theo, and others. We are left with the marvelous illustrations in this book and the record of a mentally disturbed artist who didn’t sell a single painting in his lifetime but left so much beauty to the rest of us.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

This is a clever little book by a seventeen-year old girl, living in New York City, and describing her years at school.

Nicolaia Rips is the only child of bohemian parents, who live in the renowned Chelsea Hotel. Her father, once a lawyer, is now writing and her mother, a former model, is painting. They have very little idea of what their daughter is doing at school. Luckily it doesn’t seem to matter much, because she has made dear friends with some of the hotel occupants.

It’s just as well, because the girls at school leave her out of their cliques, and the boys ignore her. The book has a series of short chapters under The Fledgling Years, and Middle School, when Nicolaia tries giving parties and arranging other surprises – in order to make friends. They make very funny reading, but don’t do much for the author’s popularity.

It is only when she gets into LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City, that her talent for vocal music, as well as writing, gain her an audience. This book is the result.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

This is the story of a poor little rich girl and her down-to-earth son who get to know other – finally – through this collection of letters.

Gloria Vanderbilt descended from one of the richest families in America – the Vanderbilts. This turned out to give her endless financial security but very little love. Her father, an alcoholic, left when she was fifteen months old and her mother took off for Europe with her twin sister. They lived in Paris where Gloria was looked after by a devoted grandmother and nanny and hardly ever saw her mother who spent her entire time at cocktail parties seeking out knights and earls.

Back in America eventually, Gloria showed talent as an artist and also wrote. She had a number of marriages, the most significant to Anderson Cooper’s father who died young. She and Anderson kept in touch; he went on to journalism, television and writing books. His mother has also written eight books and contributes to the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Elle.  In this book with her son, they agree to be frank in their memories and what they still hope to achieve. It makes for a charming read.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

Buy Now!

Paul Goldberger, a prize-winning critic of architecture, has written an impressive biography of Frank Gehry, one of the most famous architects of our time. Gehry is unusual in that he not only tried new materials, design and form, which resulted in the extraordinary Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, but he also built houses accepted and loved by the general public.

Now 82, Gehry was born in Toronto, where his Jewish parents had immigrated from Poland. At school, Frank was always drawing, and also making shapes out of cardboard and pieces of paper. At one point he attended Bloor Collegiate where he took woodshop and was skillful at installation work and meticulous about measurements. The family moved to Los Angeles,  where Frank eventually studied architecture at the University of Southern California.

This book gives an excellent description of how his career developed with very good photographs of his highly original buildings. Frank’s parents were Irving and Thelma Goldberg. Frank and his first wife ran into some anti-Semitism and they changed their name to Gehry. In this book, Goldberger feels that Frank Gehry approaches his buildings as a painter would his canvas. He has written a sensitive and fascinating biography.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

Buy Now!

We have all loved Hitchcock films and this is an “elegant and hugely enjoyable” look at the man who made them.

Alfred Hitchcock was born in 1899 in eastern suburbs of London and grew up on the floor above his father’s greengrocer shop. This later included two fishmonger shops and Hitch often went to school smelling faintly of fish. He was a fat little boy and, unlike his older brother and sister, was afraid of many things. The family was strictly orthodox Catholic. Ackroyd points out that this training instilled in him a sacred, rather than secular view of the world where mystery and miracle are as important as logic and reason.

Hitchcock was a lonely boy, without playmates, so he invented games for himself and played alone. He also discovered the picture palaces and saw his first films at the ages of eight or nine. In his teenage years he saw D.W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks senior, Harold Lloyd and Mary Pickford, as well as the first Chaplin silent films. After training as an engineer and subsequently finding work at a Telegraph Company, he started taking night classes at the Art Department at the University of London. From here his skill at design, as well as his interest in seeing all the films in town, got him a job at Famous Players-Lasky and he was on his way. He also met and married Alma Reville, who was already a professional of film production. The book tells how he made The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, To Catch a Thief,  The Birds, and many other of his famous pictures. There are also good illustrations.

Peter Ackroyd has won prizes for many of his biographies including T.S. Eliot, Charles Dickens and most recently, Charlie Chaplin. He holds a CBE for services to literature.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

Buy Now!