Neither plaything nor conceit, Monninger’s rural idyll is very much a lived experience: genuine, well-earned, and downright...
Monninger (Mather, 1995, etc.) moves upcountry to transform, on a shoestring, a big barn into a home, with the intent of setting down roots—no precious venture this.
It’s a simple, evocative chronicle of the months following Monninger, his girlfriend Wendy, and her son’s purchase of a 6,000-square-foot barn in Warren, New Hampshire. Parts of the structure likely dated back some 200 years; it needed plenty of work, but not so absurdly much that they couldn’t tackle the job on a scant budget, particularly with the help of a local graybeard who helps them get their rural New Hampshire bearings. Monninger is an affable guide to his new home and property and speaks in an unpretentious voice about shaping the landscape, mind’s-eyeing its future configuration and disposition, seeing a wild garden here, and a cultivated one there, and a grass maze in the meadow. The three learn to lay fence and plant a hedge of winterberry, crab, and hawthorn, but are easily distracted by trying to identify the local flora. Everywhere there are mysteries waiting to be unraveled: puzzling whether the saw marks in the beams were pit cut or milled, discovering a swastika hex mark on a basement wall that gives them the willies until they learn of its long history. Keeping the beast of a structure warm proves to be an experience in itself, and they soon learn more than they want to about insulation (and covering all that beautiful interior wood) and stoves. But Monninger is a cheerful soul, and the prospect of umpteen cords of firewood doesn’t depress him; rather, he takes it as an opportunity to learn about the art of woodpiling. It also gives him an abrupt reality check: “Barns are wood, plain and simple, and usually dry wood at that. I’ve read they make a beautiful fire.”
Neither plaything nor conceit, Monninger’s rural idyll is very much a lived experience: genuine, well-earned, and downright enviable.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8118-2974-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
IN THE NEWS
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
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