In short, this is a provocative book that should be read by virtually anyone who takes benzodiazapines, regardless of amount or frequency. The reader is likely to experience initial relief and empowerment, and if good health is sustained after termination of medication, fine. If, on the other hand, termination of the medication does not seem to help, the reader will certainly question the author's rather basic and simple cause-effect thesis.

To take another example, it's highly likely that "Chronic Fatigue Sydrome" has produced sufferers in excess of the actual presence of the disease. Whether it's better to regard some forms of fatigue as a disease or as depression is debatable. People can spend as much time and money treating a mysterious virus as depression. Tricket's book provides the same sort of room for controversy. If Valium indeed is your problem, you'll be most grateful to her. If Valium is simply addressing symptoms of anxiety and depression, you could become needlessly alarmed about that 5 mg daily tablet, increasing the amount of anxiety you already are experiencing.

This was a very quick read for me as it was tremendously enjoyable. I was moved by the author's description, and imagination. She developes an beautiful story that held my attention from beginning to end.

For a much better book, both in binding and illustration, I would recommend Mermaid Tales from Around the World by Mary Pope Osborne. The pictures are large and colorful in that book, emulating the style of the area of the world from which the story comes.
Don't waste your money on Serenade of Mermaids.

Unlike other mermaid collections I've read, this one is actually addressed to the little girls who are interested in mermaids, but not so simple as to turn off collecters and scholars. Before each tale is a small summary of information about merfolk in various cultures to set the background for the tale. Nothing extraordinary, but it's kind of nice to get some mermaid trivia. Best of all, the author makes an attempt to get stories from a wide variety of places; there is a story from Switzerland as well as Japan!

I strongly recommend this collection, for it can be enjoyed by anyone.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

For over 40 years, Graham Greene spent Spring and Autumn at his villa in Anacapri. During much of that time, Shirley Hazzard and Steegmuller were also in attendance and struck up as close a friendship as that truculent Englishman would allow. Rather than a formal biography, GREENE ON CAPRI is a delightfully impressionistic book about Greene, the island they all held in common (though Green knew astonishingly little about its history), and the famous literary visitors whose lives partially intersected, most notably Harold Acton and Norman Douglas.

As I am planning a visit to Capri in the foreseeable future, I was pleasantly surprised how much information about the island and its history is conveyed in the book's 149 pages. Everything but the Blue Grotto was there. I was particularly delighted to see a photo of the villa that figured so largely in one of my favorite films, Jean-Luc Godard's CONTEMPT (1963): it was built by the Fascist -- later Communist -- writer Curzio Malaparte.

Many of my favorite books point the way to interesting new authors, works, and places. GREENE ON CAPRI is a keeper, and I expect it will help inform my future reading and (hopefully) travel for some time to come. Shirley Hazzard is a delightful writer, and Greene a fascinating if prickly subject. The result: a literary gem which merits my highest recommendation.

Hazzard clearly knows Greene's work well and makessome insightful comments on it. Although recording her personalobservations of Green over many years, she is careful not to make anyexcessive claims to knowledge of his subjectivity. She remembers whatwas exhilarating about his company as well as the constant need forwariness because of his sudden furies and what seem almost likepossessions by a need to be provocatively disagreeable. Any sharedpleasure always seems to have teetered at the edge of the abyss of hisrages. After one of Greene's onslaughts, Hazzard's husband (FrancisSteegmuller) laconically observed, "We came into the restaurantlaughing, then laughed no more" (134).

It is not altogetherclear why they continued to put up with someone who behaved sounreasonably so often. It is not that she knew she was going to writeabout him. Had she planned to be Greene's Boswell, she would haveassiduously written down his table talk each time after leaving hiscompany. As it is, she has produced an elegant memoir of a friendshipof two couples on a spectacular rock (though Greene was oblivious ofnatural beauty and the dramatic vistas that are everywhere onCapri).