A critically acclaimed young writer with a warm eye for the incongruous (Video Night in Kathmandu, 1988) spends a year in Kyoto, intending to both explore ``the private Japan...the emotional Japan'' and live a life of Thoreauvian simplicity. Iyer succeeds in his first goal but not completely in his second as life throws him a curveball in the form of Sachiko, a pretty and wildly enthusiastic woman in her early 30s. The mother of two small children, Sachiko is a typical Japanese housewife married to a usually absent businessman who ``was no more affected by her doings than a big boss might be.'' Everything in Sachiko's world has been preordained—she had no career, she's not allowed to travel—and she yearns with enormous hunger for the freedoms of the West. ``I dream you life-style,'' she says to Iyer in her struggling English on numerous occasions. ``You are bird, you go everywhere....'' Sachiko's passions are ardent and almost unbelievably eclectic—rock music, tea ceremonies, stuffed animals, classical literature—and through her, Iyer learns much about the conflicts and complexities of modern-day Japan. He also learns much that debunks his preconceived notions about the island nation. In between Iyer's increasingly personal meetings with an awakening Sachiko (she eventually leaves her husband to travel as a tour guide), he describes his encounters with Zen Buddhism, Japanese culture, Japanese literature and Americans abroad. His observations in these sections are often astute and light in touch, but they lack some of the energy and refreshing elements of surprise that suffuse the rest of the book. A personal and evocative work filled with much gentle humor, intelligence and insight.
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1991
ISBN: 0-679-40308-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991
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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