As Ellis shows in this charming, gracefully written memoir, literary heroines revealed to her new life stories, new selves...
A literary journey to self-discovery.
Growing up in London in a family of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, playwright Ellis (Cling to Me Like Ivy, 2010) looked for models of courage and adventure and, she hoped, an escape from the future her parents planned for her: marriage to an Iraqi-Jewish man, children and a well-kept home. In this autobiography of reading, the author recalls the fictional characters she saw as heroines, including Anne of Green Gables; strong-willed Scarlett O’Hara; the elegant Anne Welles of Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls; and the consummate storyteller, Scheherazade. Louisa May Alcott’s Jo March “was fabulously rebellious” but disappointed Ellis when she married a German professor and gave up writing to run a school. At 12, Ellis loved Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet “for her muddy petticoats, her irreverence and her big heart. But mostly I loved her defiance of convention.” Until she switched her allegiance to brave, clever Jane Eyre, passionate Cathy Earnshaw, of Wuthering Heights, was the heroine she wanted most to emulate. “Back then,” Ellis writes, “I wanted my heroines to show me new ways to be, like heedless, selfish Cathy.” As a college student, she found a kindred spirit in Sylvia Plath and her protagonist, Esther Greenwood, of The Bell Jar. Dressing in black, wearing heavy eyeliner, Ellis decided to go to Cambridge, “where Plath’s poetry took off, and where she met Ted Hughes.” From Lucy Honeychurch, in E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View, she got “the idea of becoming an artist and living an artist’s life. It was because of her that I started writing plays.” Her first was inspired by Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in which she identified with the angry Martha.
As Ellis shows in this charming, gracefully written memoir, literary heroines revealed to her new life stories, new selves and her own power to invent her life.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1101872093
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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
BOOK REVIEW
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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