This collection could have used more variety, but the preponderance of stories on human mortality doesn't make it a downer;...
Sickness, murder, death, sudden loss—the latest installment in this venerable series skews heavily toward personal essays in which people face up to life’s overwhelming sadness.
Paul Crenshaw (“After the Ice”) recalls the infant nephew who was murdered by his stepfather; Madge McKeithen (“What Really Happened”) details her prison visit to see a man who murdered his wife, who was the author’s best friend. The poet Toi Derricotte (“Beds”) tells of her lifelong love-hate battle with an abusive father. In “Grieving,” Meenakshi Gigi Durham watches as her academic husband is denied tenure, and assesses what it means for a dedicated professional to suddenly find himself in free-fall. Christopher Hitchens (“Topic of Cancer”) faces a wretched diagnosis with his usual unsentimental eloquence, as he goes “from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady.” The strongest, most interesting essays put a face on larger issues. In “What Broke My Father’s Heart,” Katy Butler tells how her father’s pacemaker allowed his body to live long after his brain stopped functioning; the essay raises tough questions about how expensive medical care can exacerbate more pain than it relieves. Charlie LeDuff’s deeply reported “What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?” takes a case that went horribly wrong—a 7-year-old girl killed when cops busted into the wrong apartment—and uses it as a reflection on how crime-ridden Detroit has become a toxic environment for residents and innocent bystanders alike. In another big-picture piece, “Generation Why?” Zadie Smith assesses how Facebook is a perfect reflection of the shallow mind of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Other contributors include Hilton Als, Mischa Berlinski and Pico Iyer.
This collection could have used more variety, but the preponderance of stories on human mortality doesn't make it a downer; the brave voices behind these experiences keep the pages turning.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-47977-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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