Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 13, 1994 TAG: 9403060212
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Jorge Amado is a gifted storyteller and worthy advocate of lusty living. He also has the great good fortune of having grown up in Bahai, Brazil, a port city rich in folklore where Portugese and Spanish cultures are mixed with African. There conservative Catholicism finds itself challenged and infiltrated by Afro-Brazilian religious ceremonies - primitive, orgiastic and popular. His latest novel to take advantage of this heritage, "The War of the Saints," involves several interesting plots. A beautiful young woman finds herself caught between passionate love and an overly protective guardian. A statue of the lovely Saint Barbara of the Thunder comes to life and sneaks away from an impending exhibition, much to the chagrin of the museum director who assumes she has been stolen. And an activist priest becomes the object of attempts at assassination and seduction. These plots are interwoven against a backdrop of government corruption and incompetence, and of conflict between wealthy landowners and the masses. The novel is an enjoyable way to get a healthy dose of multiculturalism if you are not offended by the author's unabashedly male point of view.
- PETER CROW
Edith Henderson's Home Landscape Companion.
By Edith Henderson. Illustrated by Vicky Holifield. Peachtree. $19.95.
"Companion" is the key word in the title of this book. Henderson has organized her ideas and suggestions by the seasons, starting with winter "because everything is exposed and visible." Edith Henderson is well known and respected as a landscape architect and columnist for a time at the Atlanta Journal. She has made it easy for us - the readers - to accept as much or as little of her recommendations for a beautiful garden. The plan is all important and can be basic or elaborate as the gardener chooses. For those of us who like the results but not the effort to get there, she does not overwhelm us with massive amounts of duties. Gardening must be fun, so many people love it. Henderson is an inspiration with her low-keyed style of valuable information.
- PEGGY C. DAVIS
Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counter
Culture. By Paul Krassner. Simon & Schuster. $23.
While I was hardly a member of the counter culture, this book should have appealed to me. I had lived my formative years during much of the same period, cutting my adolescent teeth on Mad magazine where Krassner got his start, the Cold War, Kennedy, civil rights, Vietnam, Dr. Timothy Leary and company among the turmoil of the decades of 1960-1980. Krassner, Abie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin et al was deep inside the leadership of the counter culture movement during those years. Yet nothing in this book really clicked for me. Krassner gives the reader little real introspection, no context or depth. His autobiography is exactly as the title proclaims, manifesting itself in a kaleidoscope of one-liners, personal and sometimes unbelievable anecdotes, many with references to people or incidents of which the reader has no inkling. Krassner is famous for his parody and I finished the book with the feeling that this was his greatest ever. If you are interested in the period, you might fare better than I did. But borrow it from the library.
- RICHARD JASSE
Across the Bridge. Stories by Mavis Gallant. Random House. $19.
A skilled and professional craftsman, Mavis Gallant constructs stories the way Gothic cathedrals were built. Delicate, durable and beautifully wrought, each of the eleven tales in her latest collection is a work of art. Set in Montreal or Paris, they are true to time and place, yet transcend both. z On
the surface, Gallant's characters seem to have little in common, but they are almost all poor in spirit and intellect. Most allow others to decide everything. The first four works relate the lives of a woman whose "gentility was the brace that kept her upright," and her two daughters, one of whom verges on mental retardation. Mme. Carette's efforts to find her husband show great determination and even more desperation. The results of her success bring no contentment to anyone.
The other tales take place in Paris, not the city that glistens with lights and joie de vivre, but that of cramped apartments, loneliness and poverty. Each is finely delineated with attention to detail and spare but elegant prose. "Across the Bridge" is a volume to read slowly, to think about and to reread. Gallant has few equals in the form of the short story and here again proves her mastery.
- LYNN ECKMAN
\ Peter Crow teaches at Ferrum College.\ Peggy C. Davis reviews books regularly for this page.\ Richard Jasse teaches at Ferrum College.\ Lynn Eckman teaches at Roanoke College.
by CNB