christmas days jeanette winterson review

About a year before the release date, Lucas was “certain” the movie “was going to be terrible.” The machines, including R2-D2, wouldn’t work, and the studio was stingy with funds (at that point, Lucas pledged to always control the money). Lucas was in the Tunisian desert starting his 84-day shoot of “Star Wars.” The weather was terrible, and sand got into everything. “George Lucas: A Life” is a sweeping, perceptive biography of the influential director ($32, Little, Brown and Co.).īrian Jay Jones (“Jim Henson: The Biography”) sets the stage for this impressive biography with a short prologue set in 1976. The story stands in counterpoint to the author’s laconic “I am adopted and it didn’t go well.” “The Silver Frog,” with suggestions of Oliver Twist and Roald Dahl’s Matilda, arranges a plague of magic silver frogs to deal with the meanie heading an orphanage. “The Snowmama” brings some entertaining playfulness and silly puns (soul becomes Snowl) to the living-snowman idea. Apparitions, strange noises, a madman, a kitchen knife and a Stephen King–ish turn near the end all make “Dark Christmas” very dark indeed. Henry feel as its hero discovers the explanations behind the magic that cures his misanthropy. In “Spirit of Christmas,” a child trapped in “BUYBUYBABY, the world’s biggest department store,” helps a couple shed their materialism. She is especially good with the supernatural, using eerie and magical elements in ways that hark back to Poe and Dickens. Versatile British writer Jeanette Winterson (“The Gap of Time”) has gathered 12 Yule-themed stories in a book laced with bits of autobiography both in the introduction - a handy guide to the history of Christmas - and in the dishes she describes after each tale. Ghosts, fairies, self-revelation and friendly seasonal recipes give “Christmas Days: 12 Stories And 12 Feasts For 12 Days” a potentially wide-ranging appeal for readers as well as gift shoppers ($24, Grove Press).

Christmas days jeanette winterson review